ROME – The awareness campaign ‘Bladder cancer: know it, control it, treat it’, promoted by Merck Italia in collaboration with Aps Associazione Paliniuro (Patients free from urothelial neoplasms), Women’s Health and Men’s Health, starts today and will last 3 months. The initiative – explains a joint note – is aimed at the three figures most involved in this process: patients, pathology specialists (urologist and oncologist) and nurses. Often underestimated due to the absence of specific symptoms at the onset such as to allow early diagnosis, bladder cancer, which often corresponds to urothelial carcinoma, sometimes has limited therapeutic options for specific patient categories.
“In Italy every year there are about 30 thousand new cases of bladder cancer – says Cinzia Ortega, Soc director of Oncology Asl Cn2 Alba-Bra, Michele and Pietro Ferrero Hospital in Verduno – Among the predisposing factors: cigarette smoke with irritating and carcinogen on the bladder mucosa and exposure to toxic chemicals of industrial origin such as dyes and solvents. Symptoms are often subtle. Haematuria, or the appearance of blood in the urine, can also occur intermittently, but when it occurs it is a sign that should be immediately reported to the family doctor to arrange tests and be able to make an early diagnosis. In fact, it is important to promptly recognize any bladder cancer to increase the chances of a cure”.
And he concludes: “Today there are various therapeutic options available to offer to the patient, but all decisions must be taken in a multidisciplinary context. Even for advanced or metastatic disease – underlines Ortega – we have therapies that can increase life expectancy. The important thing is to define therapeutic strategies integrated with therapies in combination or in sequence, which take into account the type of patient and his/her disease progression”.