Dr. Scott Eggener, a urologic oncologist specializing in testicular cancer, sat down with science and health editor Shaun Thomas during April’s Testicular Cancer Awareness Month to discuss detecting the disease early, reducing stigma and educating young patients about cancer risk.

Eggener earned his medical degree from Stanford University and completed his urology residency and fellowship training in urologic oncology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Eggener currently serves as the chair of the department of urology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Daily Bruin: What makes testicular cancer particularly relevant for college-aged populations?

Scott Eggener: It is one of the most common cancers in young men of a college-age group. If caught early, the burden of treatment is often way less than if it’s caught later.

Young men have unique brains that sometimes explain things away, or are hesitant or even outright resistant to seek medical care, and the take home message is: if you feel a lump, a bump or an abnormality in the testicle, err on the side of caution, and go get it checked out to make sure it isn’t testicular cancer. It often isn’t, but it’s worth getting checked out, and if it is, you’ll be grateful that you got it diagnosed in a timely fashion.

DB: What are the earliest signs or symptoms of testicular cancer that people should be aware of?

SE: The most common would be a palpable abnormality in the testicle, where there’s a bump or a firm area or swelling, those would be the most common. It’s essential that you mentioned that just pain in the testicle, in of itself, is very rarely testicular cancer. There’s a lot of men, and young men in particular, that experience discomfort in the testicle, and it should be comforting to them that it’s almost never testicular cancer unless there is a bump or lump associated with it.

The second part of it is there are times, albeit much rarer, where testicular cancer has spread elsewhere in the body, and the initial symptoms are reflective of that – it’s abdominal pain, back pain, a lymph node that they can feel somewhere in their body, neurologic symptoms, shortness of breath.

DB: Are there any known risk factors for testicular cancer, or does it often occur without a clear warning?

SE: Most people who are diagnosed with testicular cancer, we don’t know why they got it. However, we do know that Caucasians have the highest incidence – or the highest likelihood – based on genetics, but most people have no genetic risk factors. If you had an undescended testicle at birth, meaning it wasn’t in the scrotum at birth, and either got there over time or surgically had to be brought there, that’s a common risk factor that’s called cryptorchidism.

DB: Are there any lifestyle changes, or anything people could do in their own power to prevent or slow down?

SE: Nothing that we know of, except for self exams every month or two to feel the testicles, so that if you are destined to get it, it’s diagnosed in a timely fashion.

DB: How important are self exams, and what’s a realistic way for someone to incorporate it into their general routine?

SE: People have to figure out whether they want to do it and how to do it. One way of doing it is roughly the first every month. When you’re in the shower, feel each testicle. The way to do it best is with the first three fingers on each hand, roll each testicle through those six fingers and just feel the surface of it and see if there’s any of those things we talked about.

DB: What does treatment for testicular cancer typically look like in the modern day?

SE: If it’s caught early, it’s often just removal of the testicle and then monitoring. If it has metastasized, cure rates are sky high. Ninety-five percent of all people are cured, and it’s never a long-term problem. But when it metastasizes, there’s usually a combination of treatments that are required, which range from surgery to chemotherapy to radiation therapy or a combination of those.

DB: What are some of the most important long-term considerations for patients, particularly regarding their fertility and hormone function?

SE: We have the luxury in testicular cancer of having such sky high cure rates that goal No. 1B doing as much as possible to preserve their quality of life and limit the long-term toxicity or side effects. The take-home message is that almost all guys with testicular cancer can father children afterwards, if they were predestined to father children.