Eighty percent of bladder tumours are cancerous and difficult to treat, according to Dr Nguyen Hoang Luong of the urological endoscopy department at Binh Dan Hospital in HCM City.
Doctors at Binh Dan Hospital treat a patient with a bladder tumour (Photo courtesy of the hospital)
HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Eighty percent of bladdertumours are cancerous and difficult to treat, according to Dr Nguyen Hoang Luongof the urological endoscopy department at Binh Dan Hospital in HCM City.
Many hospitals in the country including Binh Dan Hospital have seen more andmore patients with bladder tumours.
The hospital each month admits 60 to 80 patients withbladder tumours which have not yet spread to muscles, Luong said.
More than 1,000 new cases of urinary bladder cancer arediagnosed in Vietnam every year. Around half of the patients die due to thedisease.
According to Luong, the development of diagnostic imaging andpathology has helped detect more and more incidences of bladder tumours.
To treat bladder tumours, many hospitals such as BinhDan Hospital use lasers and chemotherapy.
The hospital conducted a study on use lasers andchemotherapy to treat 68 patients with bladder tumours from 2014 to 2016.The study showed that effectiveness and safety in treatment was high. Only10 of them experienced a tumour reoccurrence.
In the study, more than 79 percent of them were male and agedbetween 51 and 70. Seventy-two of the male patients had a history ofsmoking. The common symptom among these patients was blood in urine.The hospital’s doctors said the average size of the tumour was nearly 19milimetres and the number of tumours in each person ranged from oneto three.
Dr Nguyen Phuc Cam Hoang, the hospital’s deputy director,told Vietnam News: “The cancer does not have any specific symptoms and are thesame as infections in the bladder or kidney or kidney stones: blood in urine.”
If patients have blood in their urine and are treated but donot recover within two months, they should go to specialised hospitals forexamination and treatment, he said. Doctors should then prescribe tests forbladder cancer, he said.
Health experts said that people who smoke have fourtimes higher risk of bladder cancer than non-smokers. People whosework involves chemicals are at a higher risk./.
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Doctors at Binh Dan Hospital treat a patient with a bladder tumour (Photo courtesy of the hospital) 
