Bladder cancer refers to any of several types of malignant growths of the urinary bladder. It is a disease in which abnormal cells multiply without control in the bladder. The bladder is a hollow, muscular organ that stores urine; it is located in the pelvis. The most common type of bladder cancer begins in cells lining the inside of the bladder and is called urothelial cell or transitional cell carcinoma (UCC or TCC).
Signs and symptoms:
Bladder cancer characteristically causes blood in the urine, this may be visible to the naked eye (frank haematuria) or detectable only be microscope (microscopic haematuria). Other possible symptoms include pain during urination, frequent urination or feeling the need to urinate without results. These signs and symptoms are not specific to bladder cancer, and are also caused by non-cancerous conditions, including prostate infections and cystitis.
Treatment:
The treatment of bladder cancer depends on how deep the tumor invades into the bladder wall. Superficial tumors (those not entering the muscle layer) can be "shaved off" using an electrocautery device attached to a cystoscope. Immunotherapy in the form of BCG instillation is also used to treat and prevent the recurrence of superficial tumors. BCG immunotherapy is effective in up to 2/3 of the cases at this stage. Instillations of chemotherapy into the bladder can also be used to treat superficial disease.
Untreated, superficial tumors may gradually begin to infiltrate the muscular wall of the bladder. Tumors that infiltrate the bladder require more radical surgery where part or all of the bladder is removed (a cystectomy) and the urinary stream is diverted. In some cases, skilled surgeons can create a substitute bladder (a neobladder) from a segment of intestinal tissue, but this largely depends upon patient preference, age of patient, renal function, and the site of the disease.
A combination of radiation and chemotherapy can also be used to treat invasive disease, and, in many cases, it is not yet known which is the better treatment - radiotherapy or radical ablative surgery.
There is weak observational evidence from one very small study (84) to suggest that the concurrent use of statins is associated with failure of BCG immunotherapy.
