Plan Ahead For Bladder Cancer Treatment And Costs

Cancer Treatment may last for months or years. So, it is best to know about different types of bladder cancer treatments like surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy. Find out more about bladder cancer treatment and the best ways to raise funds here.

The painful and arduous process of one’s cancer treatment can affect a person mentally, physically, and even financially. Without a high savings balance or health insurance, one most accessible and quickest way to overcome the financial risk can be fundraising through a crowdfunding platform. A crowdfunding platform is an online platform where someone who requires funds, starts a fundraiser. This fundraiser is then shared on social media to collect funds from well-wishers and donors online.  This process of raising funds online via a crowdfunding platform is also called medical crowdfunding and requires no payback. 

A leading crowdfunding platform in India is ImpactGuru where you can start your fundraiser at a 0% platform fee and get 24*7 personalised expert assistance for your fundraiser campaign. Till date, 2,00,000+* lakh fundraisers have been created on ImpactGuru.

Read more: ImpactGuru’s success stories 

Bladder Cancer Prognosis and Treatment Available

The bladder cancer treatment you get will depend on whether you have early or advanced bladder cancer.

1.      Surgery

  i.   Transurethral Resection

Transurethral surgery is the most frequent treatment for early-stage malignancies. A resectoscope is inserted with a tiny wire loop from the urethra and then into the bladder. The loop inserted cuts or burns a tumour with an electrical current, removing it from the bladder.

  ii.  Partial and Radical Cystectomy

Partial cystectomy involves the removal of a small portion of the bladder. This procedure is mainly for low-grade tumours that have been confined to a small part of the bladder and infiltrated the bladder lining. Other organs, like the uterus and ovaries in women and the prostate in men, maybe removed if cancer has spread outside the bladder and into nearby tissue.

 iii.  After Surgery- Urinary Diversion

After removing the whole bladder, the surgeon will develop an alternative mechanism for fluid to store and deliver, termed urinary diversion. The surgeon may place a bag to hold urine within or outside the body depending on inclination. Non-continent urinary diversion occurs when a urostomy bag is positioned outside the body, worn beneath the clothing. Continent urinary diversion comprises a pouch formed from intestinal tissue within the body to store urine. In a recently established surgical method, installing a synthetic bladder has also proved effective for certain patients.

2.      Chemotherapy

The most well-known cancer treatment is chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is a treatment that employs chemicals (medications) to stop cancer from spreading and reoccurring.

Chemo drugs are inserted or infused into your veins or muscles, which go into your body via blood flow.  Chemo before surgery is considered most beneficial. This therapy is also known as neoadjuvant treatment. Patients may get chemo following surgery (adjuvant treatment) in certain situations if it spreads to other body parts.  Since chemo interacts with all fast-dividing cells of the body, it creates side effects, including hair loss and stomach problems. 

3.      Immunotherapy or Intravesical Chemotherapy

For bladder tumour treatment, the mainly preferred medication is Intravesical (into the bladder via a tube put into the urethra) immunotherapy or chemotherapy.

Patients with high-grade invasive bladder cancer commonly suggested a drug called Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG). BCG aids your immune system in destroying cancerous cells. Immunotherapy with BCG drug is the most effective treatment for high-grade invasive bladder tumour recurrence.

BCG is usually administered intravenously once a week for six weeks, although long-term maintenance treatment is occasionally required. Intravesical BCG might cause bladder irritation, discomfort or burning during urine, and a low-grade temperature and chills.

Another therapeutic option is intravenous chemotherapy with mitomycin C. The chemotherapy is delivered directly to the bladder. No other cells in the body are exposed to it, lowering the risk of adverse effects. It's also often administered in a single dosage following cystoscopy-assisted tumour removal. 

4.      Radiation Therapy

Radiation treatment involves using harmless, unseen, high radiation levels that may destroy both healthy and malignant cells. Radiation may be used as a substitute strategy or in conjunction with chemo or surgery to kill cancer cells.

•  External Radiation

In this treatment, a device creates external radiation outside the body. The device focuses a radiation beam straight at the tumour. With superior imaging techniques today, radiation supplied from many angles limits radiation exposure to adjacent tissues and organs, decreasing harm to these tissues. 

 External radiation is provided primarily for five days for five to seven weeks. Tumour cells generally grow quicker than healthy cells; therefore, repeated dosage aims to destroy cancer cells more rapidly and limit the chance of destroying normal cells.

•   Internal Radiation

This therapy introduces a radioactive pellet into the bladder via the urethral or a cut in the lower abdomen. The treatment seems to last several days, and individuals are obliged to remain in the hospital until the pellet removal.

Recommended Read: Crowdfunding: An Alternative To Health Insurance For Cancer Treatments

Knowing that you are diagnosed with bladder cancer can be challenging. It could be burdensome to focus on your treatment properly if you lack the financial resources for immediate treatment. One of the quickest and simplest ways to get emergency medical fundraising could be a crowdfunding platform such as ImpactGuru.

 Medical crowdfunding in 3 simple steps

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