What is cryptorchidism and what can be done about it?

Without using a strictly scientific definition of what cryptorchidism is, we can say this:

undescended testicles (for boys) into the scrotum.

Even in utero, in the fetus, the testicles are located and develop, until a certain age, in the abdominal cavity. Shortly before childbirth, the testicles enter the inguinal canal, pulling out the peritoneum like a shell (as if wrapping itself around it), and descending through the inguinal canal pass into the scrotum. Sometimes, for a reason not fully understood by science (there is a viral theory, and a hormonal one, and a theory of dysembryogenesis, and many more theories, but the end has not been made yet), the testicle encounters an obstacle to its progress. The difficulty is that the levels at which the testicle stops are different. In the most difficult cases, the testicle remains in the abdominal cavity. In most cases - at the level of the middle or upper part of the inguinal canal. Occasionally (as a gift for the surgeon) - at the very entrance to the scrotum.

 One thing is known - one cannot do without surgery for cryptorchidism!

How so? A neighbor told me that her child had cryptorchidism, she went to a good doctor, he observed the child until the age of 10, and at 11 the testicles descended into the scrotum? NOT TRUE! It was not cryptorchidism, but a "migrating testicle".

What's the Difference? Yes, in the fact that with a migrating testicle, the child is not sick at all. Often, against the background of neurological hypertonicity, the child has an "increased cremasteric reflex." Every man knows that on the beach, entering the cool water, the testicles rise to warm up. The same thing, but with the help of a more intense work of the nervous system, occurs in a child. The levator testicle muscle, due to spasm, cannot release the testicle to its natural place in the scrotum. With age, the nervous system matures (or the child is treated by a neurologist) and the normalizing muscle tone returns the testicle to the scrotum.

With cryptorchidism, the obstacle to the descent of the testicle is so severe that there is no question of any independent descent of the testicle. Anyone who has seen in the operating room with what effort a canal is made with an iron instrument to lower the testicle into the scrotum understands that the testicle cannot do this on its own!

It must be noted that in some cases, when prescribing hormone therapy at an early age (months of life), it is occasionally possible to stimulate the process of testicular descent. But this is not the rule. Again, "hormone therapy" is not a "harmless" term.

 Why so many explanations?

Yes, because if you "buy" these stories with real cryptorchidism, the consequences can be terrible!

If the literature data in general and the results of the Dissertation for the title of Candidate of Medical Sciences Igor Alexandrovich Makedonsky are translated into a simple and understandable language, it looks something like this:

1 - surgery for cryptorchidism should be performed as early as the child's condition allows. On average, the optimal age should be considered the age from 1.5 to 3 years, but under all other conditions, no later than 7 years.;

2 - in children who have not been operated on before the age of 7, there is a high risk of the most "unpleasant" form of infertility - autoimmune (which is not treated by anything).

3 - with "high" forms of cryptorchidism, the risk of the most malignant of the known forms of cancer is high.

 And the most important thing!

 A timely operation for cryptorchidism leads to a COMPLETE recovery of the child.

With all the "ensuing" consequences!