Stage I Bladder Cancer
Stage I describes superficial non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer. It is present in the bladders inner lining but hasnt invaded the muscle wall. We usually perform an initial TUR to determine the extent of the cancer as well as the grade. We typically do a second TUR to remove the rest of the tumor followed by intravesical therapy with either BCG or chemotherapy.
Risk Factors For Bladder Cancer
There are some things that can make you more likely to develop bladder cancer. These are called risk factors and they include:
- smoking chemicals in cigarettes can cause bladder cancer, so if you smoke, your risk is up to three times that of a non-smoker
- age most people with bladder cancer are over 60 years of age
- family history a first degree relative with bladder cancer increases risk up to nearly 2 times higher than the general population
- chemicals being in contact with certain chemicals for a long period of time, like aromatic amines, benzene products and aniline dyes, which have been linked to bladder cancer
- frequent infections of the bladder over a long period of time
- some types of radiation therapy around the pelvis, and the chemotherapy drug cyclophosphamide.
Having these risk factors doesnt mean you will develop bladder cancer. Often there is no clear reason for getting bladder cancer. If you are worried about your risk factors, ask your doctor for advice.
Can Bladder Cancer Be Cured
When detected at an early stage, bladder cancer can usually be treated successfully whereas later-stage cancers may present greater challenges for the patient and their healthcare team. As discussed later, people who have had bladder cancer are at risk for recurrence for the best chance of successfully treating recurrent cancer, early detection is again important.
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Questions For Your Team
Asking questions will help you understand more about your bladder cancer, the treatment and how you can improve your prognosis. We have pulled together the most important common questions that you might want to ask, and we also cover what the answers might be. We always suggest taking someone with you for these appointments to help remember everything that you are told.
Signs And Symptoms Of Bladder Cancer
Sometimes bladder cancer doesnt have many symptoms. Signs or symptoms can include:
- blood in your urine
- pain or burning when passing urine
- not being able to pass urine when you need to.
Not everyone with these symptoms has bladder cancer. If you have any of these symptoms or are worried, always see your doctor.
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Metastatic Lung Cancer Started Someplace Else
Primary tumors can spread from almost anywhere in the body to your lungs. But some types of cancer are more likely to grow in your lungs. These include:
- Cancer treatments youâve already had
- How you want to treat your cancer
Cancer that has spread to your lungs is also probably in your bloodstream. It could be in places that donât show up on imaging scans. Thatâs why doctors mostly use chemotherapy to treat metastatic lung cancer. It destroys cancerous cells everywhere in your body.
Surgery Is less common. Doctors use it if the tumors are only in a small part of the lung . It can also help when the primary cancer is colorectal cancer, bone cancer, or soft tissue sarcoma.
Other treatment options include:
- Hormonal therapy. This slows the growth of certain types of cancer cells and eases your symptoms.
- Targeted therapy. It uses medications that attach to proteins on cancer cells to stop or slow their growth.
- Immunotherapy. This uses your bodyâs immune system to destroy cancer cells.
- Ablation therapy. It destroys cancer cells or tumors with lasers or electrical currents.
- Radiation. High energy X-rays are used to destroy tumors.
- Thoracentesis. This uses a needle to remove fluid in the space between your lungs and chest wall.
- Oxygen therapy. It helps you breathe.
- Stents. They open up narrowed airways.
Survival Rates By Disease Extent
A second method estimates survival rates based on the extent of cancer in the body. This is the approach used by the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program. The SEER system classifies cancer in one of three broader categories:
- Localized: Cancer limited to the lungs
- Regional: Cancer that has spread to nearby lymph nodes or structures
- Distant: Metastatic cancer
Under the SEER classification system, distant disease and stage 4 cancer are synonymous.
The one drawback to the SEER approach is that stage 4a and 4b lung cancer are melded into one category. This generalized approach not only returns a much lower five-year survival estimate but fails to reflect the wide variability in stage 4 survival rates, particularly in people with limited metastases.
| SEER Stage at Diagnosis |
|---|
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Metastatic Lung Cancer Outlook
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the world. Thereâs no way to prevent lung cancer, but there are ways to treat it. And thereâs reason to be hopeful: Doctors are working on new treatments every day. Immunotherapy, which boosts your bodyâs own cancer-fighting powers, has shown promise in recent years.
Your outlook for living with metastatic lung cancer depends in part on where the cancer started. Itâs rare, but people with sarcoma, renal cell carcinoma, bladder cancer, colon cancer, or melanoma can sometimes be cured with surgery. And chemotherapy may cure some people with cancer that started in the testicles or lymph nodes.
Most people with this type of cancer can expect to live about 5 years. But that doesn’t take into account newer treatments, like immunotherapy, which boosts your bodyâs own cancer-fighting powers. And it also doesnât reflect that everyone is different. How well you respond to treatment depends on what treatment you and your doctor chose, your overall health when you were diagnosed, how soon you were diagnosed, and how far the cancer has spread.
Living with lung cancer takes a toll on your mental health, not just your physical health. So itâs key to take steps to manage your stress and anxiety.
Joining a cancer support group or talking privately with a therapist are booth good ways to deal with your feelings. Ask your doctor to suggest options that may be right for you.
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Treatment For Bladder Cancer
Treatment for bladder cancer depends on how quickly the cancer is growing. Treatment is different for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer and muscle-invasive bladder cancer. You might feel confused or unsure about your treatment options and decisions. Its okay to ask your treatment team to explain the information to you more than once. Its often okay to take some time to think about your decisions.
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Side Effects Of Treatment For Bladder Cancer
All cancer treatments can have side effects. Your treatment team will discuss these with you before you start treatment. Talk to your doctor or nurse about any side effects you are experiencing. Some side effects can be upsetting and difficult, but there is help if you need it. Call Cancer Council or email to speak with a caring cancer nurse for support.
Prognosis And Survival For Bladder Cancer
If you have bladder cancer, you may have questions about your prognosis. A prognosis is the doctors best estimate of how cancer will affect someone and how it will respond to treatment. Prognosis and survival depend on many factors. Only a doctor familiar with your medical history, the type and stage and other features of the cancer, the treatments chosen and the response to treatment can put all of this information together with survival statistics to arrive at a prognosis.
A prognostic factor is an aspect of the cancer or a characteristic of the person that the doctor will consider when making a prognosis. A predictive factor influences how a cancer will respond to a certain treatment. Prognostic and predictive factors are often discussed together. They both play a part in deciding on a treatment plan and a prognosis.
The following are prognostic and predictive factors for bladder cancer.
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Treating Stage I Bladder Cancer
Stage I bladder cancers have grown into the connective tissue layer of the bladder wall , but have not reached the muscle layer.
Transurethral resection with fulguration is usually the first treatment for these cancers. But it’s done to help determine the extent of the cancer rather than to try to cure it. If no other treatment is given, many people will later get a new bladder cancer, which often will be more advanced. This is more likely to happen if the first cancer is high-grade .
Even if the cancer is found to be low grade , a second TURBT is often recommended several weeks later. If the doctor then feels that all of the cancer has been removed, intravesical BCG or intravesical chemo is usually given. If all of the cancer wasn’t removed, options are intravesical BCG or cystectomy .
If the cancer is high grade, if many tumors are present, or if the tumor is very large when it’s first found, radical cystectomy may be recommended.
For people who arent healthy enough for a cystectomy, radiation therapy might be an option, but the chances for cure are not as good.
Factors Influencing Survival Rates
The variability in survival rates highlights one key reality about stage 4 lung cancer: no two people have the same disease. Arguably more than any other stage of the disease, stage 4 lung cancer survival is influenced by multiple factors, some of which are fixed and others of which can be changed .
There are seven factors known to influence survival times in people with stage 4 NSCLC.
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Survival Rates By Stage
The numbers listed below are based upon countless people detected with bladder cancer from 1988 to 2001. These numbers originated from the National Cancer Institutes SEER database.
- The 5-year relative survival rate for people with stage 0 bladder cancer has to do with 98%.
- The 5-year relative survival rate for individuals with stage I bladder cancer has to do with 88%.
- For stage II bladder cancer, the 5-year relative survival rate is about 63%.
- The 5-year relative survival rate for stage III bladder cancer has to do with 46%.
Bladder cancer that has spread to other parts of the body is often hard to alleviate. Phase IV bladder cancer has a relative 5-year survival rate of about 15%. Still, there are typically treatment alternatives readily available for people with this phase of cancer.
Remember, these survival rates are only approximates they cant predict exactly what will happen to any individual person. We comprehend that these data can be complicated and may lead you to have more concerns. Speak with your physician to much better comprehend your certain situation.
Being diagnosed with bladder cancer can be overwhelming and scary, especially if its phase 4.
What Types Of Testing Should I Expect For Monitoring My Condition
Since metastatic prostate cancer isnt curable, your doctor will most likely set up regular visits to check the cancers location, and to manage any long-term side effects from the cancer or any medication youre taking.
And since treatments for advanced prostate cancer are changing so fast and need to be given in a certain sequence to be the most effective, youll probably have not only a prostate cancer doctor but other specialists taking care of you. Your care team should coordinate closely, say the authors of a major study of such teams published in August 2015 in the journal Annals of Oncology.
Along with regularly testing your prostate-specific antigen levels, your care team may request blood tests that measure such prostate cancer indicators as alkaline phosphatase and lactate dehydrogenase. Magnetic resonance imaging or PET scans of the spine or other bones can also help identify how your cancer responds to treatment.
If youve had radiation, youre at an increased risk for bladder and colorectal cancer and should get screened regularly for these as well.
The tests youll have and how often youll need them should be customized to you. Your care team will consider your overall health, medications that are safe for you to take, other health conditions you might have, and what stage your cancer was when you were diagnosed.
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Causes And Risk Factors
Researchers dont know exactly what causes bladder cancer, but they do know what increases the risk of getting it. These risk factors range from family history to certain types of medication.
Source: Valisure
Data published in 2021 on MedRxiv by researchers from the online pharmacy Valisure and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center showed patients who took Zantac had elevated diagnosis rates of bladder, breast, prostate and thyroid cancer.
Patients should keep in mind that this data suggests a link between ranitidine and increased risk, but it doesnt prove that all people who take ranitidine will get bladder cancer.
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Strategies To Improve Treatment
Most new treatments are developed in clinical trials. Clinical trials are studies that evaluate the effectiveness of new treatment strategies. The development of more effective cancer treatment for bladder cancer requires that new and innovative therapies be evaluated in patients. Participation in a clinical trial may offer access to better treatments and advance the existing knowledge about treatment of bladder cancer. Patients who are interested in participating in a clinical trial should discuss the risks and benefits with their physician.
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Survival Rates Of Bone Metastases
Survival rates for people with bone metastases vary greatly by cancer type and stage. Your general health condition and the type of treatment you received for the primary cancer are additional factors.
Discuss your particular situation with your doctor. Remember that survival rates are averages gathered from large numbers of people. Also, survival data may reflect statistics from a period before the most recent treatment advances.
A large-scale 2017 study of the 10 most common cancers with bone metastasis found:
- Lung cancer had the lowest 1-year survival rate after bone metastasis .
- Breast cancer had the highest 1-year survival rate after bone metastasis .
- Having metastases in bone and also in other sites was found to decrease the survival rate.
Here are some typical figures from a 2018 study of common cancers and bone metastasis:
| Type of cancer |
Youre likely to have a combination of therapies that may include:
- radiation to slow metastasis growth and reduce pain
- chemotherapy to kill cancer cells and reduce tumor size
- hormone therapy to reduce the hormones known to be involved with breast and prostate cancer
- painkillers and steroids for pain relief
- drugs that specifically target bones
- surgery if necessary to stabilize your bone, fix a break, and help with pain
- physical therapy to strengthen your muscles and help you with mobility
- extreme heat or cold that targets cancer cells and may relieve pain
Cancers Likely To Metastasize
You may be surprised to learn that lung metastases are quite common. While almost any cancer can spread to the lungs, some are more likely than others to do so. With that, the most common types of cancer that metastasize to the lungs include:
- Thyroid cancer
- Uterine cancer
Pulmonary metastases occur also very often in sarcoma, a relatively rare type of cancer. As many as 20% of soft tissue sarcomas and up to 40% of bone sarcomas develop lung metastases.
Occasionally, healthcare providers are unable to determine the primary site of cancer. In this case, they refer to the cancer as a cancer of unknown origin with metastasis to the lungs.
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Where Can I Find Support
It can be very difficult to deal with a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer. Its natural to wonder if youre doing all you can to fight the cancer and how to handle guilt, intimacy with a partner, and concerns about masculinity. And finding and paying for the best care can, of course, be a challenge.
But emotional and practical support can help you move forward. An important thing to remember is that youre not alone. There are many kinds of help available, and the right cancer resources can make a world of difference.
Ask your doctor for resources you can contact, including social workers and support systems in your community. The Patient Navigator Program of the ACS can be reached at 1-800-227-2345 youll be connected to a patient navigator at a cancer treatment center who can help you with practical and emotional issues.
The Prostate Cancer Foundation has links to in-person and online support groups around the country, and the ACS lists nationwide support programs as well. The PCF also offers resources ranging from help with housing during cancer treatment to finding ways you can look good and feel better while living with cancer.
What Are The 5
In 2020, approximately 17,980 deaths in the United States are predicted to be attributed to bladder cancer1. This represents the eighth most common cause of cancer deaths in men.
The general 5-year survival rate for people with bladder cancer is 77%, while the 10-year survival rate is 70% and the 15-year survival rate is 65%1. Notably, as each patient and cancer are different, it is not possible to definitely know the disease course for an individual patient.
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