Bladder Cancer

Description

Smoking causes cancer of bladder. Unlike many other cancers, stopping the habit of smoking results in improvement of the spread of cancer and type of cancer.

Alternative nomenclature – Urothelial cancer, Transitional cell carcinoma (TCC)

Epidemiology:

An estimated 274,000 individuals will be diagnosed with this disease worldwide over next 2 years and less than half of them would succumb to it. It is the second commonest cancer of urinary tract in the world.

Symptoms

➾ No symptoms
➾ Blood in urine
➾Straining during urination with pain at the end of urination
➾Passing materials resembling peel of grapes
➾ Retention of urine

Types of disease

➾ Superficial (on the bladder inner surface)
➾ Deep (Into the bladder muscle)
➾ Locally spread (beyond bladder wall)
➾ Metastatic (spread to other organs)

Evaluation of patient

A detailed symptom assessment followed by thorough endoscopic evaluation. At the same endoscopic session complete excision of all visible tumours (TURBT) should be performed.

Staging is done with all the data in hand which includes pathology report of the cancer removed, the blood tests and the radiology reports like X-ray, CT scan.

Treatment:

Approximately 20% of all the patients diagnosed as bladder cancer have invasive type at the time of diagnosis. These are the patients who require very aggressive treatment like complete removal of bladder (Radical cystectomy). Out come of this surgery is directly related to pathologic stage, which means – a delay in treatment leads to adverse outcomes.