Treating Bladder Cancer

More than 70,000 people are diagnosed with bladder cancer every year. “Bladder cancer is a common cancer in America. Unfortunately, it’s caused primarily by smoking. There are other causes as well, but most people don’t think about the fact that smoking is going to cause them to have bladder cancer,” said urologic oncologist Dr. Joseph Klink.
90% of people diagnosed with bladder cancer are 55 or older. The number one symptom is blood in the urine, but painful, frequent, burning, or weak urination could also be a sign. If it’s discovered early, “Initial treatment for bladder cancer is initially carving out the cancer in a minor surgery without any incisions just inside the bladder. That will then give us pathology to let us know how serious the cancer is in the next step in treatment is based on how serious the cancer is, and how deeply it has invaded,” said Dr. Klink.
If the bladder cancer is advanced and has invaded the muscle wall, surgeons like Dr. Klink can remove it with the help of a robot. “In the olden days, we used to take out the entire bladder through a very invasive surgery with a very long time in the hospital and a difficult recovery. Now we can take out the whole bladder and do a reconstruction with the da Vinci robot in a minimally invasive manner and help with recovery. People don’t have as much pain or wound infections, and you can get out of the hospital faster.”
If the bladder is removed, the urine still must go somewhere. The robot can help with the reconstruction. “There has to be a reconstruction usually involves a piece of the bowels. With the da Vinci robot, we can actually do that reconstruction all inside the body without making any open incisions to get that done,” said Dr. Klink. You can learn more by searching for bladder cancer on leehealth.org.
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Lee Health in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of health care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For more than 100 years, we’ve been providing our community with personalized preventative health services and primary care to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries.
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