Bladder cancer is a relatively rare form of cancer that starts in the lining of your bladder. Your bladder is a small hollow organ that holds your pee (urine). Healthcare providers have many ways to treat bladder cancer, including surgery to remove bladder cancer. Bladder cancer may come back after treatment, so people with bladder cancer should be vigilant about following up with their healthcare providers.
Healthcare providers can treat early-stage bladder cancer — cancer that’s found and treated before it can spread — but about 75% of early-stage bladder cancers come back.
What’s usually the first symptom of bladder cancer?
Blood in your pee (urine) is the most common bladder cancer symptom. That said, simply having blood in your pee isn’t a sure sign of bladder cancer. Other conditions cause this issue, too. But you should contact a healthcare provider whenever you spot blood in your pee. Other bladder cancer symptoms include:
Visible blood in your pee (hematuria): Healthcare providers can also spot microscopic amounts of blood in pee when they do a urinalysis.
Pain when you pee (dysuria): This is a burning or stinging sensation that you may feel when you start to pee or after you pee. Men and DMAB may have pain in their penises before or after peeing.
Needing to pee a lot: Frequent urination means you’re peeing many times during a 24-hour period.
Having trouble peeing: The flow of your pee may start and stop or the flow may not be as strong as usual.
Persistent bladder infections: Bladder infections and bladder cancer symptoms have common symptoms. Contact your healthcare provider if you have a bladder infection that doesn’t go away after treatment with antibiotics.
How do healthcare providers treat bladder cancer?
There are four types of bladder cancer treatment. Providers may use any or all of these treatments and may combine treatments.
Surgery
Surgery is a common bladder cancer treatment. Providers chose surgical options based on the cancer stage. For example, many times, TURBT, the procedure used to diagnose bladder cancer, can treat bladder cancer that hasn’t spread. Healthcare providers either remove the tumor or use high-energy electricity to burn it away with a process known as fulguration.
Radical cystectomy is another treatment option. This surgery removes your bladder and surrounding organs. It’s done when people have cancer that’s spread outside of their bladder or there are several early-stage tumors throughout their bladder.
In men and people DMAB, this surgery removes prostates and seminal vesicles. In women and people DFMB, providers may remove ovaries, their uterus and part of their vagina. Providers also do surgery known as urinary diversion so people can still pass pee.
Providers may follow surgery with chemotherapy or radiation therapy to kill any cancer cells surgery may have missed. This is adjuvant therapy.
Chemotherapy
These are cancer-killing drugs. Providers may use intravesical therapy to deliver chemotherapy drugs directly to your bladder via a tube inserted into your urethra. Intravesical therapy targets cancer without damaging healthy tissue.
Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy is a treatment that uses your immune system to attack cancer cells. There are different types of immunotherapy:
PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibitor therapy: PD-1 and PD-L1 are proteins found on certain cells. PD-1 is on the surface of T-cells that help regulate your body’s immune responses. PD-L1 is a protein found on the surface of some cancer cells. When these two proteins connect, the connection keeps T-cells from killing cancer cells. In inhibitor therapy, the two proteins can’t connect, leaving the way clear for T-cells to kill cancer cells.
Radiation therapy
Radiation therapy may be an alternative to surgery. Healthcare providers may combine radiation therapy with TURBT and chemotherapy. This treatment is an alternative to bladder removal surgery. Healthcare providers consider factors such as tumor growth and tumor characteristics before recommending this treatment
Targeted therapy
Targeted therapy focuses on the genetic changes that turn healthy cells into cancer cells. For example, drugs called FGFR gene inhibitors target cells with gene changes that help cancer cells grow.
How do healthcare providers diagnose bladder cancer?
Healthcare providers do a series of tests to diagnose bladder cancer, including:
Urinalysis: Providers use a variety of tests to analyze your pee. In this case, they may do urinalysis to rule out infection.
Cytology: Providers examine cells under a microscope for signs of cancer.
Cystoscopy: This is the primary test to identify and diagnose bladder cancer. For this test, providers use a pencil-sized lighted tube called a cystoscope to view the inside of your bladder and urethra. They may use a fluorescent dye and a special blue light that makes it easier to see cancer in your bladder. Providers may also take tissue samples while doing cystoscopies.
If urinalysis, cytology and cystoscopy results show you have bladder cancer, healthcare providers then do tests to learn more about the cancer, including:
Transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT): Providers do this procedure to remove bladder tumors for additional tests. TURBT procedures may also be a treatment, removing bladder tumors before the tumors can invade your bladder’s muscle wall. This test is an outpatient procedure done under spinal or general anesthesia.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test: This imaging test uses a magnet, radio waves and a computer to take detailed images of your bladder.
Chest X-ray: This test lets providers check for signs bladder cancer has spread to your lungs.
Bone scan: Like a chest X-ray, bone scans check for signs bladder cancer has spread to your bones.
Healthcare providers then use what they learn about the cancer to stage the disease. Staging cancer helps providers plan treatment and develop a potential prognosis or expected outcome.
Bladder cancer can be either early stage (confined to the lining of your bladder) or invasive (penetrating your bladder wall and possibly spreading to nearby organs or lymph nodes).
The stages range from TA (confined to the internal lining of your bladder) to IV (most invasive). In the earliest stages (TA, T1 or CIS), the cancer is confined to the lining of your bladder or in the connective tissue just below the lining, but hasn’t invaded the main muscle wall of your bladder.
Stages II to IV denote invasive cancer:
In Stage II, cancer has spread to the muscle wall of your bladder.
In Stage III, the cancer has spread to the fatty tissue outside of your bladder muscle.
In Stage IV, the cancer has metastasized (spread) from your bladder to your lymph nodes or to other organs or bones.
A more sophisticated and preferred staging system is TNM, which stands for tumor, node involvement and metastases. In this system:
Invasive bladder tumors can range from T2 (the tumor spreads to your main muscle wall below the lining) all the way to T4 (it spreads beyond your bladder to nearby organs or your pelvic side wall).
Lymph node involvement ranges from N0 (no cancer in lymph nodes) to N3 (cancer in many lymph nodes, or in one or more bulky lymph nodes larger than 5 centimeters).
M0 means that there isn’t any metastasis (spread) outside of your pelvis. M1 means that it has metastasized outside of your pelvis.
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