School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash University, The Alfred Centre, Level 6, 99 Commercial Rd, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3004.
Testicular cancer commonly affects men aged between 20 and 35 years. Screening for testicular cancer may reduce both morbidity and mortality, yet the effectiveness of any method is unknown. Equally, screening may also promote treatment procedures that are unwarranted or may adversely affect the health outcomes of the patient with no net benefit. Additionally, many organisations recommend against screening for testicular cancer due to the low incidence of testicular cancer and favourable outcomes in the absence of screening.
The primary objective of this review is to determine whether screening for testicular cancer (physician or patient self-examination) reduces testicular cancer-specific mortality. The secondary objective of this review is to determine impact of screening for testicular cancer on quality of life and adverse outcomes.
Electronic searches were conducted across MEDLINE, CINAHL, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) and PsychINFO.
All published randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of screening versus no screening for testicular cancer were eligible for inclusion in this review.
The search identified 19 potentially relevant articles, which were selected for full text review. None of the articles that were reviewed were evaluated as eligible for inclusion in this review.
There are no published RCTs evaluating the effectiveness of screening for testicular cancer.
Patients with increased clinical risk factors for testicular cancer, including a family history of testicular cancer, undescended testis (cryptorchidism) or testicular atrophy should be informed by their physicians of their potential increased risk of testicular cancer, along with potential benefits and harms associated with screening.
Written by:
Ilic D, Misso ML. Are you the author?
Reference: Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2011 Feb 16;2:CD007853.
doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD007853.pub2
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 21328302
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