bladder cancer brought to you by CANCERS.NET -the links below support the summary statements made here.
The paragraphs that follow were written prior to Juanuary 20, 2000..
On that date, I discovered that the folks at the U. of Rochester had done a study to
confirm not only the occurence of an event (on chromosome 9) which initates or
potentiates Bladder Cancer in Transitional Cells, but also to provide a simple straight
forward way to study the progress and predict the occurrence of a next turmor after
the surgical removal of the last one. Further, on the Webcafe list we discussed the
possibility of an initiating event a few days earlier from data that most people
were getting reoccurrences of the tumors at the same spot that they had first had one. See
for yourself..
The summary remarks presented below suggest the need for bladder patients to learn about
and become experts in the disease of bladder cancer. Several groups of patients and
patient advocates are busy at work trying to get from the medical literature and the
medical providers in general; service providers, product providers and government
statistical databases; the information needed to adequately characterize bladder cancer.
The "Cooperative Network for
Evaluation of Markers of Urinary BladderCancer, funded from the NIH priority area of
cancer. " has no comprehendium report, instead to find its results, one must be
willing to and able to search the separate journals stretching over years. For all
of that money, one would expect their an end of the project compehendium ( Legislation may
make sure that findings in projects like this are reported out in the future).
The patient is generally responsible for his or her own health and except during the few
minute visits every 3 months or so to the physician, the patient is on his
own. Please remember that "The urinary bladder is
affected by numerous treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy radiotherapy,
photodynamic and laser therapy, and immunotherapy. The literature ... offer[s] little
information concerning the tissue and cellular manifestations related to
treatment. A variety of changes [caused by treatment] in
urothelial cells may be seen on urinary cytology or biopsy. Therapy- associated cytologic
[at the cell level] abnormalities remain the most common cause of
false-positive reports in urothelial cytology. Most pathologic changes are characterized
by an exuberant inflammatory reaction, blood vessel abnormalities, and
degenerative/regenerative urothelial atypia; none of these findings are diagnostic of the
outcome of a specific therapy." Bladder treatment.
immunotherapy. and chemotherapy [In Process Citation] Spain, UI: 99424076 Urol Clin North
Am 1999 Aug;26(3):535-54 adopted from a post by Wendy Sheridan
Most patients can learn the medical terminology and medical pathology with enough
comprehension to challenge and co participate with care providers in ways that enhance
their treatment option selections and prognostic outcomes. The patients themselves,
using the vehicle of the internet, are contributing to the information about bladder
cancer. It is the obligation of the bladder cancer patient both to learn about the
disease that has attacked him/her and to contribute, from personal experience, to the
databases of information that may lead to a better understanding of the disease.
The medical profession and those who control it, like the Government, the
Medical Associations and the pharmaceutical industry generally are not seriously working
on ways to prevent bladder cancer; but will cheerful support a new proposed treatment.
Presumably few economic benefits accrue to prevention.
It is generally agreed that bladder cancer has, for many, been shown to express a relationship to smoking, has stage, progression and prognostic outcomes marked by several different genes. One should make sure that he/she has arranged for one's own blood samples to be sent both for genetic marker testing and stored for later follow-up genetic testing. Gene markers that are personal to a patient become important in deciding on courses of action. It is now possible to run upto 10,000 genes on one test from the same person Your personal tissues, fluids and blood can be tested to determine whether or not they have a reasonable chance of responding to chemotherapies. Certain urine tests that can be used at home have been developed and are useful personal diagnostic tools. Thus, get and evaluate the facts before you accept a treatment and make sure you understand exactly what the treatment is suppose to do and how it works. There is not one bit of knowledge, sense, or know how in MD or PHD, these are merely designations to show that at one time, someone finished a set of criteria which entitled to them to a title. In the boy scouts, they call it a merit badge.
Arguably there has not been demonstrated a relationship to diet and bladder cancer. Most treatments, short of removal of the bladder, have related to the immune system enhancers and it has even been suggested that bladder cancer is the result of a default condition which is prevented by an intact immune system component. To date, I know of no studies which suggest which part of the immune system is the failing component or if that is the correct way to look at it. The degree and kind of cross methylation in the DNA may be a key in discovering the metabolism of cancer in bladder. In fact, as of this writing, no know cure for bladder cancer, except surgery, seems to exist so remission seems to be the short term goal. Some patients manage remission for very long times. An insight into what the United States knows about the p53 gene and its ability to predict outcome can be found at here.
The staging of bladder cancer is done by estimating the degree of the cancer
penetration into the bladder wall, but cancers.net feels that it is just not enough to
stage the already developed cancers, what must also be done is to characterize the genetic
environment in which the bladder operates each day. Agreed on anatomical findings
such as thickness of the bladder wall, numbers, kinds and markers of the different
cell types that might be found in the bladder have been difficult to come by. If someone
can point me to the details of micro-anatomy, micro-pathology and cytometry of the bladder
and its surrounding environments I would appreciate it. sstouden@thelinks.com.
We at cancers.net believe the medical profession has not approached the problem of cancer,
especially, bladder cancer in a sound scientific manner. Hundreds of thousands of patients
have presented with bladder cancer and still there is not common, public, database of
symptoms, developments, family, diagnostic and pathologic histories, treatment outcomes
and genetic markers summarized by each patient to analyze. This lack of a proper
scientific approach is especially troublesome, when even the clinical trial data is
rendered nearly scientifically useless. Needed is a central, single research center, free
to the patients, which is devoted solely to research in bladder cancer.. Worldwide
Disease Research Centers, Inc. at http://www.WDRC.org presents a proposal for you to
think about.
Bladder
Cancer - A state of the art paper
Bladder Cancer - WebCafe- the most comprehensive site
on the internet.