Dr Clinton on Initiatives to Improve Outcomes for Female Patients With Bladder Cancer

“[Raising] awareness is the number 1 thing. Whether it’s through the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network or other foundations and support groups, [these are] important [ways] just to get [information about bladder cancer] out there. This [allows] our primary care [providers] and internists to be more aware of risk factors, signs, and symptoms that may be linked with bladder cancer.”

Timothy N. Clinton, MD, an associate surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital as well as a surgical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discussed ongoing initiatives to improve early detection, treatment outcomes, and quality of life for female patients with bladder cancer.

Raising awareness of bladder cancer in female patients, both among patients themselves and providers, is key to improving outcomes, Clinton began. Foundations and support groups such as the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network are leading efforts to raise awareness of the disease in female patients, he said. Raising awareness leads to primary care providers and internists to watch for risk factors, signs, and symptoms that are linked with bladder cancer that can often lead to underdiagnosis of the disease, he explained.

Although bladder cancer is not as prevalent in men than women, bladder cancer remains in the top 10 most common malignancies among individuals of both sexes, Clinton said. Thus, the disease must be front of mind in terms of screening and routine urinalysis in the primary care setting, he added.

If a female patient presents with urinary symptoms such as frequency and urgency, especially if they have a history of smoking, primary care providers should not automatically ignore these as recurring urinary tract infections, Clinton said. These patients should be referred to a urologist for an evaluation; the sooner these patients can be identified, the better their outcomes will be, he concluded.