After his initial examination of Frank Fagnano, urologic surgeon Brett Carver ordered a series of blood tests, an x-ray, an ultrasound, an EKG, and a CT scan. The results, when combined with the pathology examination done after surgery, led to a diagnosis of clinical stage IIA seminoma. This meant that Frank's testicular cancer had moved into some of the lymph nodes in his abdomen, with none of these tumors being larger than two centimeters in size.
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center treats approximately 200 men with testicular cancer each year, about half of whom have seminomas. The most common treatment for seminomas is a surgical procedure known as a radical inguinal orchiectomy, in which the affected testicle is removed.
After Frank's successful surgery and time for healing, he received a daily three-week course of external beam radiation treatments delivered to the lymph node regions in his abdomen and pelvis, with the aim of killing any remaining cancer cells. Though Frank has had some lingering after effects from the radiation, Dr. Carver notes that his long-term prognosis is excellent. "His chance of suffering a recurrence is approximately 5 percent," he says, "and his disease-specific survival approaches 99 percent," which means that he has a less than one percent chance of dying from testicular cancer.
