Smoking Increases Risk of Bladder Cancer

Dec 28, 2008 by

Smoking Increases Risk of Bladder Cancer

Smoking plays a huge part in causing lung cancer and other respiratory problems – this is common knowledge. But it also greatly raises the risk of getting bladder cancer, something which most of us are unaware of.

Research at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center looked at information from other studies in the MEDLINE database which had been carried out to find the link between smoking and bladder cancer. Those studies were conducted from 1975 to 2007.

The link was clear. In particular, one specific study found that one’s risk of getting bladder cancer decreases by as much as 40% within four years of stopping smoking.

Significantly, this is a link which the majority of people do not seem to be aware of. According to the study, only 22% of bladder cancer sufferers were aware of it.

“The general public understands that cigarette smoking can lead to lung cancer, but very few people understand that it also can lead to bladder cancer,” said James E. Montie, one of the study’s co-authors. Seth A Strope, another of the co-authors, added: “A big gap exists between patient knowledge and their actual risk. Our study suggests that physicians must do a much better job of communicating the risk to our patients, and directing them toward smoking cessation programs.”

Bladder cancer is the 4th most common to afflict men in the United States, and 9th most common for the women. Each year, about 47,000 and 16,000 new cases are diagnosed for men and women respectively. Men’s higher risk is believed to be tied to male sex hormones which affects its development.

As far as conventional treatment goes, bladder cancer is also an expensive type of cancer to deal with.

Source: All 4 Natural Health News – Smoking Increases Risk of Bladder Cancer

2 Comments

  1. Ah, interesting. I came across something similar some time back.

  2. This goes on to prove that Smoking is very hazardous to health. So better be careful.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>