PROSTATE CANCER AND BLADDER CANCER
Testicular Cancer
To establish a diagnosis, most patients undergo surgical removal of the testicle. From the standpoint of needing radiation therapy, testicular cancer can be classified into two main types: seminoma and nonseminoma. Nonseminomatous testicular cancer is usually not treated with radiation therapy.
Seminomatous testicular cancer is treated with either radiation therapy or chemotherapy. When patients have no evidence of tumor outside the testicle (stage I seminoma), the options are to treat the lymph nodes in the abdomen (paraaortic lymph nodes) with radiation therapy or to monitor the patient with frequent CT scans without additional therapy. At the University of Florida, most patients with early-stage seminoma are treated with radiation therapy because the cure rate after radiation therapy in this setting is almost 100% and toxicity is low. The usual radiation therapy program for stage I seminoma involves 3.5 weeks of external beam radiotherapy with treatments given once a day, 5 days per week. Some patients loss their appetite or get nauseated during radiotherapy.
