How do you know if you’ve ruptured a testicle?
If you’ve taken a hard hit to the groin, don’t try to tough it out if the pain is severe or the swelling is dramatic, Winter says. “If you have that severe of an injury that you’re worried about testicular rupture, you should probably just go to the emergency room.”
Doctors can often tell something is seriously wrong because the injured testicle no longer has its normal feel. “It’s not that you see it—it’s that you feel it,” Winter says. A healthy testicle is “firm” and rounded. After a complete rupture, “it feels like mush,” she says. “It’s lost its rigidity.”
The bottom line: This isn’t the kind of injury to monitor at home. “It’s not like a minor thing,” she says.
Does wearing a cup prevent it?
It’s unclear whether Kuroda-Grauer was wearing a protective cup when he was injured. But Winter was unequivocal about what she’d advise to anyone playing contact or ball sports. “A neurosurgeon would tell people to wear helmets,” she says. “As a urologist, obviously, I would tell people to wear a cup.”
Read the full article here
