Why failing to check your testicles often could lead to deadly ‘cannonball lung’, warns doctor

A simple 10-second self-examination could make the difference between life and aggressive cancer, which can lead to cannonball-shaped tumors in the lungs.

Testicular cancer is the leading cause of a condition doctors call ‘cannonball lung’ – where the disease spreads to the lungs and forms a spate of rapidly multiplying tumors.

Survival rates worsen from about 96 percent with early detection to only 73 percent once the cancer has spread beyond the testicles to the lungs.

Florida-based emergency room physician Dr. Sam Ghali took to Twitter to warn people of the deadly risk after seeing the scenario in a young patient.

In a voice recording On the social media site, he told of a man in his 20s who went to hospital with a persistent cough and was found to have advanced testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs.

Multiple growths appeared as cloudy blobs on the chest X-ray — a classic case of “cannonball metastases,” Dr. Ghali said.

If testicular cancer is detected early, for example through a self-examination, testicular cancer can largely be treated.

The survival rate when testicular cancer is confined to the testicle is approximately 99 percent after five years. Once the cancer spreads to areas beyond the testicles and lungs, the five-year survival rate drops to 73 percent

A near-perfect 99 percent of testicular cancer patients who contract it before it spreads through the body will survive. That percentage drops slightly to 96 percent when the cancer spreads to the lymph nodes in the back of the abdomen.

But if the cancer is left untreated and allowed to spread, it often ends up in the lungs.

There are no hard numbers to quantify exactly how many men with testicular cancer subsequently develop cannonball-shaped nodules in their lungs.

Whether a cancer will spread to the lungs or other organs depends on the physiology of the individual patient. A subtype of testicular cancer called non-seminoma is more likely to metastasize compared to seminomas which tend to grow and spread more slowly.

The cannonball-like lesions can also result from other types of cancer, including kidney, breast, and colon.

Dr. Ghali told his 472,000 Twitter followers; “We immediately notice these large, very well-circumscribed, round lesions” in both lungs.

‘There are so many that you can’t even count them all. That is the classic phenomenon of so-called cannonball metastases.’

Testicular cancer is relatively rare, with approximately 0.4 percent of men being diagnosed with the condition at some point in their lives.

However, it is the most common form of cancer in men aged 15 to 44 years old.

Dr. Ghali said: ‘The reason I wanted to share this case with you is that this young man was finally examined when he developed a cough that wouldn’t go away… but he was not examined because of a testicular mass that he noticed and was actually getting bigger.

‘We see this far too often. The human trait of denial is very powerful. People just say to themselves: it’s nothing, it will go away. And before you know it, time passes and you get used to having put it off, and by the time you get checked out, it’s too late.”

Men’s health experts have long advocated increased self-examination as an easy, non-invasive way to make sure everything looks normal and doesn’t require attention from a trained medical professional.

Dr. Ghali added, “Guys, if you’re listening to this, if you notice anything – a lump, a mass, anything that’s weird – please get it checked out.”

The entire self-examination takes about 10 seconds. Men should place their fingers behind the testicle with their thumb in front.

Using the pads of the fingers and thumb instead of the tips, gently roll the thumb from the top to the bottom of the testicle at the front and side, and then back up again.

This should be done on both sides and the testicles should feel smooth and firm. If you feel a lump – firm and possibly the size of a pea – a doctor should take another look.