Essential Information About Bladder Cancer

Cancer is a life-threatening disease, wherever it originates, it has the same characteristic features of spread and invasion to other organs and lethality. There are four stages in the cancer of any type, such as stage I, stage II, stage III, and stage IV. The treatment type varies in each stage, and when the origin and spread of the disease when formed in the bladder, it is called bladder cancer. The main symptoms of bladder cancer are the patient feels pain on urination, some patients may get bleeding too, this condition is called hematuria medically, and the other symptom is frequent urgency to urinate. Polyuria is the another symptom (poly- means many, -uria means urination), in which the patient goes to urinate abnormally more number of times.
Cancer staging will confirm the depth of metastasis and based on the staging type whether it is stage 0, I, II, III, or IV, the treatment regimen will differ. Disease is detected by way of a visual examination method called cytoscopy (cyto- means urinary bladder and scopy means visual examination) of the urinary bladder. After that cancer is confirmed by a biopsy of the urinary bladder. Urine samples are taken in this stage called voided urine sample, which is done mainly to diagnose the urinary bladder.
Cell counts also are measured in the urine samples to confirm the diagnosis. Microscopic granules of blood will occur in the urine of the patient is done visual examination under microscope.
TNM is the staging method of bladder cancer. For example, stage I cancer is mentioned as T1 N1 M1. Here T refers to tumor, N refers to nodes, and M refers to metastasis or spread level. The more metastasis increases, the more the severity of the cancer increases to the adjacent organs of the urinary bladder.
The stage IV is the worst and utmost matured stage of bladder cancer. In this stage, the disease possibly would have spread to the other adjacent organs. Generally, smokers are more probably affected by bladder cancer and so avoiding smoking is the best measure to avoid this disease if it is found in the early stages. Both genders are equally prone to this disease.
Surgical removal of the disease area if required with radiation to the cancerous areas and drug therapy are the common regimens of bladder cancer. Transitional cell carcinomas are the common type of bladder cancer, in which the disease spreads in the inner lining of the bladder.