Bladder cancer in women too often not recognized

Monday, 2. May 2022 – 14:17 Update: 02-05-2022 16:48

Pee blood

Zuiverloon: ‘At my consultation hours, I often see women between the ages of 60 and 70 who urinate blood and have taken long-term antibiotics because they suspected a bladder infection. Valuable time is lost in this way: the tumor is sometimes already advanced, making treatment more difficult.’

Regularly check your urine for blood

Check your urine regularly for the presence of blood. The urologists advise this to all over-50s in the Netherlands who smoke or have smoked. For women, the following also applies: call the doctor if a bladder infection persists for a long time.

‘Stop smoking!’

And they urge all Dutch people to stop smoking. The urologists hope that fewer people will develop bladder cancer in the long term. Or that it will at least be discovered sooner. Yet it is important to bring bladder cancer to the fore, say Zuiverloon and Boormans. ‘Many people know that smoking causes lung cancer, but hardly anyone realizes that it can also cause bladder cancer.’

Little attention

May is bladder cancer month, and Boormans and Zuiverloon want more attention for this disease. With 7,000 new patients per year, bladder cancer is number 5 in the top 10 most common cancers. But relatively little attention is paid to bladder cancer. There is no population screening, such as for breast, cervical and colon cancer, and there are no large collection campaigns, such as for pancreatic cancer.

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