Cancer: A single dose of the drug, carboplatin, is as effective at treating testicular cancer as two to three weeks of radiotherapy,
A single dose of the drug, carboplatin, is as effective at treating testicular cancer as two to three weeks of radiotherapy, a new study by the Medical Research Council has found.
The discovery could allow surgeons to remove just the affected part of a testicle rather than the whole organ.
Nearly 2,000 men are diagnosed with testicular cancer each year in the UK.
Most men are diagnosed with stage one testicular cancer - when the disease is confined to the testis.
The most common type of stage one, seminoma, requires standard treatment consisting of surgery followed by a course of radiotherapy.
The study compared 1,500 patients treated either with radiotherapy or carboplatin.
Two years after treatment, 98% of the carboplatin group was free of cancer compared to 97% of the radiotherapy group.
In the three months after starting the treatment, patients who had been treated with carboplatin took less time off work and suffered substantially less lethargy than those having radiotherapy.
They also appeared to be less likely to develop tumours in the remaining testicle.
Commenting, Sally Stenning, senior statistician at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit, said: "We will need to follow patients for several more years before we can be certain tumour recurrence has been prevented rather than just delayed."
