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CREA ADVISES YOUNGSTERS BETWEEN 15 AND 35 YEARS OF AGE TO HAVE THEIR SEMEN ANALYSED, AS A FIRST STEP TOWARDS EARLY DETECTION OF TESTICULAR CANCER.
- Fundación Procrea begins today a preventive campaign of Testicular Cancer that will last six months. This medical centre will analyse the semen of those youngsters that request it free of charge.
Dr. Miguel Ruiz Jorro, director of the Adrologic unit and co-director of CREA (medical centre for assisted reproduction), has announced today the launching of a campaign for the early prevention of testicular cancer. The initiative is part of the social work of Fundación Procrea and will analyse completely free of charge the semen of those youngsters between 15 and 35 years of age that request it.
It is the first time that the inclusion of a semen analysis is proposed as a routine test for all youngsters, to prevent the after-effects of some illnesses and above all cancer. The campaign begins today and will conclude in six months time. Semen analyses will be performed at CREA´s Andrological Laboratory (C/ San Martín, 4 Bajo).
Dr. Miguel Ruiz pointed out the frequency of the appearance of a malignant tumour among youngsters, as well as the recent increase of such cases in the developed world. However, he stressed that it is one of the cancer types with a better cure prognostic, especially if it is diagnosed at an early stage, in which cases the percentage of cure ranges 90%.
Dr. Ruiz alerted of the increase on the probabilities of the existence of a testicular tumour when a testicular mass could be felt, presence of chronicle moderated pain on the male genitalia, history of cryptorchidism (absence of one or both testis from the scrotum) or a low count of spermatozoids. When consulting a doctor about pain, feeling of a mass, or history of testis descent alteration, specialists tend to recommend an ultrasound to asses the state of the male gonads and the possible existence of a serious pathology.
Nevertheless, it is possible that patients with a very low spermatic count have no other sign to accompany it and the only way to know this fact is performing a semen analysis. “The fact of having a very low spermatic count doesn’t automatically imply testicular cancer, in the same way that having normal semen does not guarantee the absence of a tumour”. However, “semen analysis allows knowing quickly about the existence of a greater pathologic risk on the men genitalia and will easily allow us to discover some cancer types that don’t present other symptomatology”.
CREA´s DATA
CREA presented during the 9th International Andrologic congress, celebrated last weekend in Barcelona, the results of the semen analysis performed on over 500 candidates to its Semen Bank. It can be concluded from them that over a fourth part of the youngsters that gave a semen sample (25.3%) had a low sperm count and this count was diminished (less than a million spermatozoids per millilitre) in 2.9% of the cases.
Two of the young men candidates to become a donor had testicle cancer detected. These give us only 0.3% incidence of testicular cancer among all youngsters studied, but almost 12% (11.8%) among those that had a very low spermatic count. In this sense and according to the results obtained in a recent study, in which CREA took part, the incidence of a low spermatic count affects one in every four youngsters in the Comunidad Valenciana, making this community the one with the lowest average of spermatozoids count on a national level.
From these results that match other published, Dr. Miguel Ruiz and his team, proposed for the first time, to recommend the performance of a semen analysis in all youngsters as a routine test and as a first step towards the early diagnosis of testicular cancer and other illnesses of the male genitalia. A specific treatment could prevent certain diseases such as infertility. “It is known that the lowest the spermatic count is, there is a greater possibility of the existence of a severe pathology on the male reproductive apparatus. For this reason once a semen alteration is detected, it is always recommended to conduct an andrologic clinical study” Dr. Ruiz remarked.
With the launching of the CAMPAIGN ON EARLY DETECTION OF TESTICULAR CANCER, Fundación PROCREA will obtain information regarding the incidence of pathologies on the male reproductive apparatus, as well as environmental factors that might have had an influence in the semen’s quality.
For further information about how to take part in the campaign, please visit Fundación PROCREA´s web site:
www.fundacionprocrea.org
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