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Testicular cancer is cancer that starts in one of your testicles. (It is rare to get cancer in both.) Cancer is when some of your cells start to grow out of control, invading and destroying other cells. It can be devastating to be told you have cancer. But of all the different types of cancer, testicular cancer is one of the easiest to treat. Most men make a complete recovery.

Even so, being told you have testicular cancer will be a shock. You may be worried because you've heard that you will need an operation to remove the affected testicle. And you'll probably have questions about whether treatment for testicular cancer will affect your sex life or your ability to have children.

• Most men recover from testicular cancer. It's one of the easiest kinds of cancer to treat.
• The standard treatment for testicular cancer is an operation to remove the affected testicle. Cancer in both testicles is rare. So you're unlikely to need to have both removed.
• You may also be treated with anti-cancer drugs (chemotherapy) and radiation therapy. And you may need an operation to remove cancer cells that have spread to other parts of your body.
• Most men don't have any problems with their sex life once they've recovered from testicular cancer. But going through a serious illness may affect how you feel about sex for a while.
• After being treated for testicular cancer, many men don't have any problems having children. But some treatments can affect your fertility. Your doctor will recommend having some of your sperm frozen if you want to have children in the future.

Your testicles are part of your reproductive system. Your reproductive system includes all the parts of your body that are involved in having sex and fathering children.

Your testicles are underneath your penis, in a bag called your scrotum. Your testicles are egg-shaped. They feel firm and smooth through the skin of your scrotum. In most men, one testicle hangs slightly lower than the other.

Your testicles have two jobs.¹

• They make sperm.
• They make hormones. The main hormone your testicles make is the sex hormone testosterone.²

Testosterone causes men to have male characteristics, such as a deep voice and hair on their face. It also plays a big part in giving men their sex drive.

Inside each of your testicles are lots of tightly-coiled tubes. Their job is to make sperm. Behind each of your testicles is a long, tightly coiled tube called the epididymis. This tube stores and protects new sperm. Sperm spend about two weeks here while they mature.¹ The far end of the epididymis connects to another tube called the vas deferens. When you ejaculate, this tube carries sperm from your testicles to your penis.

The skin and other tissues in your scrotum contain blood vessels. These carry nutrients and oxygen to your testicles. The tissues in your scrotum also contain lymph vessels. To read more about these, see What is my lymphatic system?

Testicular cancer causes the cells in your testicle to grow too quickly and form a lump called a tumor. Cancer cells are different from normal, healthy cells. The cells in your body usually grow in an orderly way. They grow and divide to form new cells as your body needs them. When old cells die, new cells take their place.

Sometimes this process breaks down. If cells become cancerous, they begin to grow out of control. They grow and divide quickly and chaotically. Extra cells grow when your body doesn't need them. And these cells don't stop growing or die when they should. The extra cells grow on top of each other to form the tumor.

Cancer cells can break off from the first tumor and travel around your body. They move around in your bloodstream or your lymph vessels. (To read more about lymph vessels, see What is my lymphatic system?) Cancer cells from your testicle can start growing in another part of your body, such as your lungs.³ When cancer moves from one part of your body to another, doctors call it metastasis.

However, it's rare for cancer to spread from one of your testicles to the other. Within your scrotum, each testicle is enclosed inside muscle and other tissue.¹ This usually stops cancer cells from getting through. It is possible to get cancer in both testicles, but it is rare.

Cancer cells are put into groups depending on how they look under a microscope. There are two main types of testicular cancer. They are:⁴

• Seminomas. About half of all testicular cancers are this type. It tends to be slightly older men who get a seminoma.
• Non-seminomas. It tends to be men in their 20s who get this type of testicular cancer. Non-seminomas are divided into teratomas, yolk sac tumors, embryonal carcinomas and choriocarcinomas. A tumor can contain more than one kind of these cancer cells.

Some tumors are mixed. They contain some seminoma cells and some non-seminoma cells.^{3 4} The kind of cancer cells that make up the tumor will affect the treatment you need.

All men with testicular cancer need surgery to remove the tumor. For more information, see Surgery to remove the affected testicle. If it's likely that cancer cells have spread outside your testicle, you may be given a treatment that affects your whole body. This is called systemic treatment.

Chemotherapy with anti-cancer drugs is one treatment that affects your whole body. And you may be given radiation therapy to your abdomen to kill any cancer cells that have spread there.

Seminomas are very sensitive to radiation.⁵ They're often treated with surgery and radiation therapy. Non-seminomas are often treated with surgery and chemotherapy.⁶

When doctors talk about the stage of your cancer, they're talking about how far the cancer has spread outside your testicle and into other parts of your body. One common way of doing this is to use numbers. Stage 1 means that cancer cells haven't spread outside your testicle. Stage 2, 3 or 4 mean that cancer cells have spread further.

Doctors also use something called the TNM system to describe the stage of testicular cancer. Again, numbers are used to describe how much the cancer has spread.

For more information, see Staging testicular cancer.

It might be worrying to hear your doctor talking about cancer cells spreading in your body. But testicular cancer is much easier to treat than most other types of cancer. Even men whose cancer is at a late stage stand a good chance of being cured.³

It's often impossible to say that a particular thing caused your cancer. Instead, doctors talk about risk factors. These are things that make it more likely that you'll get the disease. The main risk factors for testicular cancer are:^{3 7}

• Age. You're more likely to get the condition in your 20s and 30s
• Having a testicle that didn't descend properly when you were a baby
• Your ethnic group. White men are more likely to get testicular cancer than men from other ethnic groups.

For more information, see Risk factors for testicular cancer.