Report: Action must be taken to improve treatments for bladder cancer

There is an urgent need for new drugs for bladder cancer, according to a new paper published in European Urology.

The UK charity Action on Bladder Cancer co-authors an editorial on the paper, drawing attention to the urgent need to address the enormous, yet largely ignored, burden that this distressing disease places on individuals and society.

Bladder cancer has the highest lifetime treatment costs per patient of all cancers and the direct medical costs of cancer care in the UK are £65 million ($107.2 million). As the seventh most common cancer in the UK, bladder cancer accounts for one in 30 new cases of cancer each year but outcomes have changed little for three decades, despite significant improvements in the five-year survival rates for prostate and kidney cancers during this same period. Overall, deaths from the disease remain higher in England than other European countries with similar incidence rates and survival is worsening. On average 14 people die each day from bladder cancer.