survival depends greatly on early detection

Bladder cancer, a little-known but devastating disease, is the 5th most common cancer in France. Some 13,000 to 20,000 cases are recorded each year in France, while the month of May is bladder cancer awareness month. This pathology causes 5,000 deaths per year. Most often, it is diagnosed around the age of 70.

Bladder cancer is four times more common in men than in women, recalls the French Urology Association, but the number of cases is also increasing among women, particularly among smokers or former smokers. As with many cancers, beyond aging, lifestyle habits and environmental factors play an important role in the appearance of tumors. Here the first risk factor is tobacco. It is responsible for just over half of bladder cancers in men, and just over a third in women. Other risk factors are also highlighted, such as smoking cannabis, or having been exposed in one’s professional life to certain chemical substances such as rubber processing products, certain dyes, paints, hydrocarbons or pesticides. .

Symptoms that should alert

In 8 to 9 cases out of 10, the first symptom is hematuria, in other words the presence of blood in the urine. If urologists insist on making these symptoms known to the general public, it is because survival depends enormously on early detection. When this cancer is caught in time, it is well treated with a survival of 80%, five years after diagnosis.

But if this bladder cancer is detected later, when the muscle is affected or there are metastases, then the survival rate can drop to only 5%. Improving early detection is therefore essential to reduce mortality. The arsenal of treatments is growing. Surgery, chemotherapy or immunotherapy, several innovations have made it possible in recent years to stimulate the body to better defend itself against cancer cells.