Testicular cancer is highly treatable and often curable when combining different chemotherapy drugs, even after first-line treatment fails, a new study suggests.
Testicular cancer is diagnosed in about 170 men in Ireland every year and is the most common cancer among young men aged 15-34.
The research was led by Jack Gleeson, associate professor at cancer research at University College Cork (UCC), and the medical oncology department at Cork University Hospital, and was conducted during his time at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.
Published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), the research followed up more than 100 patients over almost 10 years to examine how effective this combination of treatment was.
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The study looked at the response rate from the chemotherapy combination and how long people survived.
It also examined the effectiveness of the combination for patients with what are called unfavourable risk factors, which would include those who did not have a complete response or a partial response lasting at least six months after first-line chemotherapy
The study found this treatment combination was shown to be very effective with high response rates of nearly 80 per cent.
There was no significant drop off in survival in the longer term, and the regimen was almost equally effective in those with or without unfavourable risk factors, the research found.
Prof Gleeson has encouraged men, especially young men, to routinely examine themselves for unusual masses or lumps in their testicles and to not be afraid to get any new lump checked out.
“Studies like this one show that chemotherapy combinations are effective in the treatment of testicular cancer. Detecting cancer early significantly increases the chances of successful treatment and recovery.”
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