Bladder Cancer

Bladder cancer tends to return in people who have had the disease. After bladder cancer is treated, there is a significant likelihood that additional cancers will occur in other locations either within the bladder itself, in the ureters (the tubes that drain the urine from the kidneys into the bladder) or in the part of the kidney called the renal pelvis, The risk of additional cancers developing elsewhere in the urinary tract means that once you have had one episode bladder cancer, you need to be monitored.

In the United States, bladder cancer is the fourth most common cancer among men and the ninth most common among women. About 60,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, most of them in adults older than 55. Caucasians are two times more likely to develop bladder cancer than are African-Americans, and the illness is three times more likely to affect men than women. Bladder cancer kills approximately 12,000 Americans each year.

Symptoms

Symptoms of bladder cancer include:

• Blood in the urine (hematuria) - This symptom is the first sign of bladder cancer in 80 percent to 90 percent of patients. Hematuria may appear as an obvious red color in the urine, or it may turn the urine a rusty color.

• Painful urination, called dysuria

• Frequent urination, more often than normal