Bladder cancer

[Mark Zuckerberg]

Bladder cancer most often causes blood in the urine.
To make the diagnosis, a thin, flexible viewing tube (cystoscope) is inserted through the urethra into the bladder.
Many cancers are treated with removal, using a cystoscope (for surface cancers) or by removing the bladder (for deeper cancers).

About 80,000 new cases of bladder cancer are diagnosed every year in the United States. According to 2019 estimates, more than 17,500 people die of bladder cancer every year. About 3 times as many men as women develop bladder cancer.
Smoking is the greatest single risk factor and seems to be one of the causes in at least half of all new cases. Certain chemicals that are used in industry can become concentrated in the urine and cause cancer, although exposure to these chemicals is decreasing. These chemicals include hydrocarbons, aniline dyes (such as naphthylamine used in the dye industry) and chemicals used in the rubber, electric, cable, paint, and textile industries. Long-term exposure to some drugs, especially cyclophosphamide , increases the risk of bladder cancer. The chronic irritation that occurs with a parasitic infection called schistosomiasis or with a bladder stone also predisposes people to bladder cancer, although irritation accounts for only a small number of all cases.
Most bladder cancers are of a type called transitional cell, affecting the same kinds of cells (transitional cells) that are usually the cancerous cells responsible for cancers of the renal pelvis and ureters.