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Although the rates of bladder cancer incidence and bladder cancer deaths have been fairly stable over the past 20 years, the disease is still just as serious and deadly. In an effort to learn more about it, let’s take a closer look at bladder cancer, the fourth most common cancer diagnosed in men.

In 2012, an estimated 73,510 adults in the United States (55,600 men and 17,910 women) will be diagnosed with bladder cancer. Approximately 14,880 deaths (10,510 men and 4370 women) will occur from this disease.

Bladder cancer rarely occurs in patients under the age of 40 years. In fact, about 9 out of 10 people with this cancer are older than 55, and the average age at the time of diagnosis is 73 years.

A man’s chance of developing bladder cancer during his lifetime is about 1 in 26. A woman’s chance of being diagnosed with this cancer is about 1 in 86. Whites are diagnosed with bladder cancer almost twice as often as blacks, and Hispanics have an even lower incidence rate than blacks.

About half of those diagnosed with bladder cancer have nonmuscle-invasive/superficial urothelial carcinoma, and the 5-year survival rate is 98%.

Approximately 35% of bladder cancer patients have a tumor that is invasive but has not yet spread outside the bladder. The 5-year survival rate for these patients is 75%.

For the more than 500,000 people in the United States who are survivors of this cancer, the American Urological Association recommends patient assessment every 3 months in the first 2 years after initial diagnosis followed by every 6 months for the subsequent 2 to 3 years, and then annually thereafter.

Sources

www.cancer.org/Cancer/BladderCancer/ DetailedGuide/bladder-cancer-what-is-cancer; www.cancer.net/patient/Cancer+Types/Bladder+Cancer?sectionTitle=Statistics; www.auanet.org/content/guidelinesand-quality-care/clinical-guidelines/main-reports/bladcan07/chapter1.pdf.

For the Record

In the June issue of The Oncology Pharmacist, the im provement in overall survival (OS) and radiographic progression- free survival (PFS) data presented in the Androgen Blockers Score Big in Prostate Cancer news brief was incorrect. With respect to enzalutamide, the improvement in OS is 4.8 and the improvement in PFS is 5.4 compared with placebo. We apologize for the error.