6 year old undescended testicles

[Hobnob90]

We noticed that my 6 year old scrotum was looking small. Felt and there was no testicles in his scrotum. Took him to the GP today and she could feel them in his groin, but they are not where they should be. She’s going to refer us to Paeds. At 6 week check everything was normal no issues. Just wondered if anybody had been through anything similar? Have been googling and reading about fertility problems from this. And now feel really stressed about it!

Not me but this happened to a friends son. They operated and he was told that any fertility treatment he may (or may not need) in the future will be NHS funded.

I'm sure this won't alleviate your worries regarding fertility but I'd get that in writing if there is any concerns.

Thanks for your reponse. I’ll definitely ask about that when we see a urologist.

My husband had this but his wasn’t discovered until he was about 11.

It did impact his fertility and we had to have IVF / ICSI (successsful) but it was a big shock as he had no idea he’d have been affected. His parents were totally clueless when we quizzed them after we’d had all the fertility tests etc. Hopefully as your DS is a bit younger he will be ok, and at least you are aware now and can get tests, treatment etc.

My son was born with his undescended and they were so far up he needed multiple surgeries between 12-18 months to bring them down and also hormone treatment. He’s almost 5 now and all has been well since but we will see a hormone specialist every 2 years until puberty to check if everything is ok and it also increases their chance of testicle cancer so when he’s older will need to have chats about checking regularly etc. Did you notice a time they were definitely descended? We were told his surgery was so young because they used to give them until primary school to come down naturally but researched showed them leaving it that long was vastly increasing chances of fertility issues and puberty issues. However I’m not sure if that’s different if there were descended and only recently went up? I’m not sure where you are but I’m in Glasgow and our urology treatment has been incredible since day 1 and still is, it’s an area they are massively pushing research on here.
To add my BIL and 2 uncles all had the surgery in primary school and only 1/3 had fertility issues

I first noticed my son’s scrotum was lopsided when he was 12 months old and took him to the GP. Although it had been documented in all his post-birth checks that both testicles were in the scrotum, the GP could only feel one.

We were referred for an USS which he had when he was 18 months old and two sonographers checked and couldn’t find the missing testicle.

We saw a urologist who put him on the surgical list for exploratory surgery, which he had just before his second birthday. We were told there were three possible options:

1. They wouldn’t be able to find the testicle at all
2. They would find it but it would be dead as testicles generally cant survive the heat of the internal body (hence why they are on the outside on the body in the scrotum). We were told this would be the most likely outcome and they would remove the testicle.
3. They would find a live testicle and bring it back down into the scrotum and stitch it into place. He said that if this were the case it was possible the testicle wouldn’t develop normally/produce sperm but that it shouldn’t affect fertility overall as the other testicle was fine and had always been in the scrotum.

He was in surgery for over 2 hours and when he came back they said they had located the testicle behind one of his kidneys but it was clearly dead and so it had been removed. They had then stitched his other testicle in place in the scrotum to prevent that one from wandering upwards in the future.

He had a few follow-up checks over the following year but they always said his fertility should be fine as there were never any concerns about his other testicle.

He’s 12 now and his scrotum is lopsided but my son takes it all in his stride as we’ve always been very honest with him from about the age of 3 that he's only got one testicle instead of two so he’s never known any different.

All we were advised upon was to keep an eye on him during puberty and if we have any concerns that he’s not developing as a normal pubescent boy would then he would need to be seen.

We were also told that boys who have a testicle removed can have prosthetic testicles from the age of about 17/18 for cosmetic purposes but that most men choose not to, especially it it’s something they’ve always lived with.

Apparently now though they also encourage young men in these scenarios (with only one functioning testicle) to make a sperm deposit to they still have the option to have children in the future should something happen to their other testicle.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. He definitely had descended testes at 6 week check. The appearance them of a baby and now is different. They are in his groin now not in the scrotum. Just don’t know how long we’re going to wait for a response back from paediatrics. I’m just shocked really that this could happen as I just presumed if they were present at 6 week check, that was it.