New Testicular Cancer Study Tells Us What We Already Know

New Testicular Cancer Study Tells Us What We Already Know

What’s the mantra we live by here at the Ball Report? That’s right: “check ’em.” The first line of defense against testicular cancer is your hands, and giving yourself a scrotum examination to look for any unusual swelling or pain can help you detect it before it worsens. Now a new cancer study out of the University of Exeter proves that we’re right on the money.

Led by Dr Elizabeth Shephard and Professor Willie Hamilton, the cancer study was the first in the UK to look at symptomatic reporting in GP surgeries. In the groups of 1,398 men with testicular cancer and 4,956 controls, they discovered that the most accurate tool for early diagnosis is pain or swelling in the scrotum. They’ll use this information to develop new tools for physicians to use in assessing patients, hopefully increasing the number of early diagnoses and the general survivability. Armed with these, GPs will be more likely to refer suffering patients to cancer specialists.

This isn’t anything new to you, dear reader. Hopefully you’ve already started incorporating regular self-checks into your grooming regimen to catch testicular cancer. It’s nice to see the scientific establishment taking these symptoms seriously and making sure the rest of the world does as well, though.

Read more at The Independent.