Can radiation cause permanent infertility? What are the prime negative effects concerning radiation therapy and testicular cancer?
CN: Radiation certainly can cause permanent impairment of sperm production, but there are techniques for testicular shielding that minimize these chances. Other concerns about radiation therapy primarily are the long term concerns about inducing second malignancies. In seminoma this is a relatively uncommon problem, however, these second malignancies do not appear often times for 10 to 20 years. Fortunately the dose given in modern times for seminoma is low and hopefully not as associated with the development of secondary malignancies as doses in years past. There are a variety of minor and more rare side effects, such as, skin changes, ulcer disease, etc. with radiation therapy but these are uncommon and usually easily managed. 33) If a patient has had stage I seminoma and received adjuvant radiation therapy and subsequently develops a second early stage seminoma on the other side, could he receive additional radiation therapy? CN: In theory, yes, but this would be at a significant ri
