Seminoma: Surveillance or radiation?

[Fish]

Personally, I'm not too knowledgeable on the abilities of PET scans for something like this. In the past, doctors have performed fine needle biopsies to collect tissue samples. I don't know if this is still done or recommended for cases like yours. You could check with you doctor. Your anxiety level seems really high - and believe me I completely understand. I deal with a lot of anxiety also. My doctor gave me a prescription for lorazepam, which helps me to calm down without going to sleep. Something else to consider.

Best wishes.

[tc2006]

Fish: I have read (and have been told) that seminoma grows really slowly. Is there any (e.g. scientific) data as far as you know on just how fast (or slow) it is growing? If I knew the answer to that question one could start doing some math as to when something that is microscopically small could show up on a CT ...

[Fish]

I haven't read any studies where they've tried to quantify the growth rate, or the time from microscopic metastasis to CT detectable tumors. I did see one article that indicated 70% of relapses with seminoma are seen during the first 2 years. I think this is about double the time frame for relapse of non-seminoma. There are some recent (2006) articles on seminoma in the Journal of Urologic Oncology, but they require a subscription. I don't know if you have access to a medical library, but you can search for articles on Pubmed online -- most journals require a subscription (although you can often see a brief summary of an article), so you would have to go to a medical library to get the full article.

This is pubmed

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB=pubmed

You type search terms into the box and hit "go". If you enter more than one term, the search engine assumes "and".

[Tom123]

Half of all men and a third of all women.

I have read this too, but am confused as to how a 1% or 10% chance comes into play. Is this saying that once cured, your odds are still close to 50% again and a 1% or 10% chance that a new cancer will specifically be from the radiation alone, or due to the fact that radiation was done, it is over 50% now? How do the two factors correlate?

[Davepet]

Wow, you just resurrected a 9 year old thread here, Tom123. I am having trouble even finding the post you quoted, so I cannot answer your question accurately .

[DJT]

Yep, blast from the past. In the mean time (10 years on) my update is- I've been pronounced cured I hope others have been fortunate as well.