In Germany, the number of inpatient testicular cancer treatments has fallen by 40 percent within 20 years. As reported by the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden on Wednesday, around 10,900 boys and men were treated in hospital for this reason in 2020 (2000: 18,100). In contrast, the total number of inpatient cancer treatments for male patients fell by only five percent in the same period.
“Particularly affected by testicular cancer are young and middle-aged men,” the statisticians explained. In 2020, around 55 percent of patients were between 20 and 39 years old. Testicular cancer was the most common type of cancer in this age group and the reason for every fourth inpatient cancer treatment. Among young men between the ages of 25 and 29, every third cancer treatment in 2020 was due to a malignant neoplasm in the testicles.
The sharp decline in inpatient treatments has several causes, it said. On the one hand, prevention and precautionary measures have improved over the past 20 years. But there are also demographic reasons, so that the decline is “at least partly due to the falling number of younger people in the population”.
According to statistics, 197 people died in 2020 as a result of a malignant neoplasm in the testicles. In 2016, the number of deaths fell to 140, a 20-year low, and has been rising ever since.
Recently, several cases of testicular cancer in professional football made headlines. There have been at least four known cases in the Bundesliga since spring. According to Susanne Weg-Remers, Head of the Cancer Information Service of the German Cancer Research Center, lifestyle factors or certain types of sport have no influence on the development of testicular cancer.
