The numbers, honestly
Testicular cancer is the most common solid tumour in men aged 15–34. Worldwide, about 70,700 men are diagnosed with it each year and about 9,200 die of it (IARC's Globocan estimates for 2024). Caught at any stage it is one of the most curable cancers there is: five-year survival is around 95 % overall, and about 99 % when it is found while still confined to the testicle.
The deaths are not spread evenly. Europe has 35 % of the world's cases but 18 % of its deaths; the regions where tumours are found late and treated late carry most of the rest. Testicular cancer rarely kills because treatment fails. It kills when it is found late.
Does checking actually save lives? The honest answer
We grade our own advice the way we grade our data, so here it is: no trial has ever tested whether routine self-examination lowers testicular cancer deaths, and the US Preventive Services Task Force actually recommends against formal screening programmes, on the grounds that the disease is rare and so curable that screening whole populations buys little.
So why does this page exist? Because that verdict is about screening programmes, not about you noticing a lump. Most testicular cancers are found by the man himself or his partner, and the stage at which one is found decides what treatment looks like: a localized tumour usually means one operation and follow-up, a spread one means months of chemotherapy. Knowing what your own equipment normally feels like is what turns "found eventually" into "found early". The NHS and the American Cancer Society both recommend exactly that: familiarity, not anxiety.
How to check yourself, step by step
- Do it during or after a warm shower, when everything hangs loose.
- One side at a time: roll each testicle gently between thumb and fingers.
- Learn the geography. The soft, slightly tender cord along the top and back is the epididymis. It belongs there, and it is not a lump.
- You are feeling for a hard, painless lump on the testicle itself, a change in size, or a new sensation of heaviness.
- Repeat monthly. Pick a date you will remember; the first of the month works.
One hanging lower than the other, or one slightly larger: normal, and yours have probably always been that way. What matters is change from your own baseline, which is the entire argument for checking monthly rather than never.
When should you see a doctor?
A new lump, new swelling, a persistent dull ache in the testicle or groin, or a feeling of heaviness: book a doctor that week, not that quarter. Most lumps turn out to be nothing sinister (cysts, fluid, a dilated vein), but that verdict belongs to a doctor with an ultrasound machine, which is a quick and painless way to know. And if it is the bad kind, the whole point of this page is that you found it in week one.
IARC Globocan 2024 · USPSTF 2011 · NHS · American Cancer Society · full citations in the register