Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute are looking to expand treatment options for bladder cancer patients beyond surgery and chemotherapy. In what’s known as the BLASST trial, they’re adding in immunotherapy before any surgery takes place in muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

OSUCCC – James doctors are educating the public about bladder cancer symptoms and prevention, while working to improve treatments through cutting-edge research.

"Bladder cancer is a difficult disease to treat. First, patients don't really know much about it, says Cheryl Lee, MD. "One of the most important symptoms to note about bladder cancer is blood in the urine. Anyone who sees red urine really should be evaluated by a urologist. That's a very serious condition."

For those who are diagnosed with bladder cancer, research has led to new treatments, including some that harness the power of patients' own bodies to fight their diseases.

"Recently a really important class of drugs has come to the market, and those are immunotherapy drugs, and in fact they work very well in patients with bladder cancer," Lee says. "Now, five new drugs in the past few years in this drug class have been brought to patients."

Bladder cancer is a cancerous growth in the urinary bladder. So how do you know whether somebody has a bladder cancer. It can be silent if it is a small tumor in the bladder, you may not recognize it. But most commonly the patients will present with blood in the urine. That is typically called as painless haematuria, we mean to say that there is no pain, but there is lot of blood in the urine, It can vary from a very small called as microscopic haematuria , that is the blood is detected by the microscopic examination of the urine to a frank haematuria, means a frank blood coming in the urine. This is the most common symptoms of bladder cancer. It can also present with pain abdomen not pain in the lower abdomen area or pain in the region of the kidneys, especially if the cancer into the kidneys. In the advanced stage the bladder cancer can present with loss of appetite, you don’t have appetite or you loose weight or sudden loss of weight, generalised weakness. These are the generalised things that present with advanced balder cancer. How to prevent bladder cancer depends on what causes the bladder cancer. The most common case of bladder cancer is smoking Once the bladder cancer comes it has to be treated. Smoking is the most common case, which has been there for few years. Even after quitting smoking developing the cancer remains development of the cancer takes some more time. If you quit the smoking today, the risk will continue for few more years. So the most common thing that you can do is or the most easiest way to prevent bladder cancer is stop smoking. The other things that can cause bladder cancer is the people who work in the painting industry, they work with batteries or petroleum products. These are the things and especially people who work in factories, they can develop these cancers. So to prevent that the companies have to educate their people who are exposed to those chemical then they need to undergo regular screening tests, then if they are identified early, the can be treated early.

A new technology being used at UConn Health is illuminating the way doctors detect bladder cancer.
Using traditional white light, it’s easy to miss trouble spots. As you can see in this video, blue light cystoscopy illuminates tumors in the bladder and identifies cancers smaller and earlier than ever before.