We really need to talk about bladder cancer
Of the top 10 cancers in the UK, bladder cancer is only one where survival rates have been shown to be getting worse. New figures published this month in the Journal of Clinical Urology confirm in a study of cases of bladder cancer in England over a 19 year period (from 1990 until 2009) that survival rates here in the UK are falling and are worse than in than in other European countries with similar incidence rates.
Shockingly, bladder cancer isn't a rare cancer that only affects a few people every year. In fact, bladder cancer is our 7th most common cancer (the 4th most common for men) with over 10,000 people diagnosed with it every year in the UK alone. Over 5,000 people in this country lose their lives to this little discussed disease every year.
That's more people than are affected by many well known cancers, including leukaemia, kidney cancer, ovarian cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, cervical cancer and brain tumours. Each year more people die in the UK from bladder cancer than die in road accidents. Yet, it is still a cancer that is hardly ever talked about.
Bladder cancer is generally easily diagnosed by urologists, but unfortunately most people are not aware of the key symptoms, so they don't go and see their GP as quickly as they should. In addition, some of the main symptoms of bladder cancer are also linked with other medical problems, resulting in GPs delaying the referral of patients on to urology specialists. This is a particular problem for women, who experience a greater amount of delayed diagnosis than men. There is also a common misconception that bladder cancer only affects older men which means that GPs often believe that the symptoms are not symptomatic of a cancer and instead diagnose problems such as recurring urinary tract infections when they occur in women, younger men and children.
Historically, there has been very little research into the causes and treatment of bladder cancer, with treatment of the disease hardly changing in the last 30 years. Despite being so common, bladder cancer receives just 0.6% of cancer research spend. This is for a cancer that is the most expensive for the NHS to treat and has the highest recurrence rate of any cancer. Simple evidence that the current treatments just aren't working as well as they should.
Very few members of the public will know that smoking is believed to be the main cause of about half of the cases of bladder cancer, or that others cases can stem from exposure to industrial chemicals and dyes. However, for many bladder cancer patients, the medical profession still cannot find a reason why they have succumbed to this disease.
