The Undescended Testis.

There can be few subjects in surgery where the published material contains so many divergent and even directly contradictory statements and expressions of opinion as that of the undescended testis and its management. The reasons lie in our incomplete knowledge of some of the very fundamentals of the matter. We are well informed concerning the anatomy of cryptorchidism and the effects of persisting undescent on testicular structure and function, but we know little about the late results of treatment, and much of the available information relating to the natural history of the condition and the frequency of complications is suspect since it is the outcome, not of the observation of boys and men with undescended testes, but of deductions made from the numbers of such individuals occurring in statistical surveys of the general population and of series of patients with testicular diseases. Moreover, throughout large areas of this sea of only indirectly relevant figures swim the twin red herrings, observer error and the retractile testis.