There are approximately 367,000 new cancer cases reported in the UK every year. The common types of cancers include Skin cancer, Lung Cancer, Prostate cancer, Breast cancer, Kidney cancer, Colorectal cancer, and Bladder cancer. Bladder cancer being the 11th most common cancer diagnosed in the UK, which holds for 3% of all new cancer cases (2017).

Muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) has the highest number of unmet clinical needs. Globally its only half of the eligible patients that receive curative treatment since the radical treatment is not much exhibited. Radical cystectomy understands the standard of care in MIBC. The patients who were unfit for cystectomy would only be the ones going for Radiology. If we look back to historical comparisons of survival it was evident that outcomes were incorrectly interpreted mostly favoring surgeries.

Radical radiotherapy with the use of radiosensitizers depicts that it can achieve similar oncological outcomes to surgery. Survival stakes, even with radical treatment, are poor and have remained unchanged for many years. Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) recently published audit results of contemporary UK radiotherapy practice for the management of MIBC against national guidance are quite disappointing.

One way out to this , would be that bladder cancer patients should be identified separately from the general group of urological cancers, with tumor-specific specialist multidisciplinary team discussion, clinician and bladder cancer nurse specialist.

Author