Bladder Cancer Awareness: The Power of Early Detection
What impact can early detection have on bladder cancer? Expert Dr. Shaakir Hasan from Beth Israel Lahey Health discusses the difference that early detection can make on bladder cancer prognosis, common symptoms, and proactive patient advice to ensure the best care.
[ACT]IVATION TIP
“…do not ignore something that feels off something that’s abnormal. Of course, blood while you’re urinating that’s just not a normal thing. Now, I want to make a special point here to just point out that women a lot of times, especially premenopausal women obviously go through menstruation cycles, and they might just say, oh, there’s some blood in the urine, probably from the period probably related to that, or it’s transient. It just comes and goes, and you don’t think about it too much. Do not ignore this, okay?”
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Transcript:
Lisa Hatfield:
Dr. Hasan, what does it mean to be diagnosed with bladder cancer at an early stage versus a later stage?
Dr. Shaakir Hasan:
Great question. So, like any other cancer the earlier the diagnosis, the better the prognosis, the better the chance of cure. So, bladder cancer is one of these that we are fortunate enough to be able to detect early most of the time because you’ll present with symptoms, you’ll present with painless hematuria or just blood in the urine that doesn’t cause any pain. And as a result of that, that’s obviously not normal. A lot of patients will notice that and be alarmed by it, rightfully so, and they’ll seek medical attention. One thing leads to another, and hopefully they’ll see a urologist and ultimately get a cystoscopy
and ultimately get that diagnosis of bladder cancer before it spreads, before it becomes invasive, before it becomes metastatic. And at that point, uncurable. So earlier the stage, the easier it is to cure, the better chances you have. So it’s a very big deal to be able to catch this early, and particularly because this is the type of cancer that you can catch early, unlike many other cancers where, unfortunately, we don’t detect it early enough, this is an opportunity to get it and cure it before it becomes a problem. So, it’s really important in this situation.
Lisa Hatfield:
Okay. Thank you. And do you have an [ACT]IVATION tip for that, Dr. Hasan?
Dr. Shaakir Hasan:
Definitely. So do not ignore something that feels off, something that’s abnormal. Of course, blood while you’re urinating that’s just not a normal thing. Now, I want to make a special point here to just point out that women a lot of times, especially premenopausal women obviously go through menstruation cycles, and they might just say, oh, there’s some blood in the urine, probably from the period probably related to that, or it’s transient. It just comes and goes, and you don’t think about it too much. Do not ignore this, okay? Look, it could be nothing. It could be related to menses, it could be maybe something else like a kidney stone that you don’t notice, something like that. But that also deserves medical attention. So anything that’s off, please do not hesitate. Go seek medical advice right away. Hopefully you’ll have a PCP that you can connect with, but if not even if you just go to an urgent care and you just get a urinalysis and they confirm it and they go, okay, well, let me take you to the next steps it’s really important thing to make sure you don’t ignore.
