Description

Bladder cancer is the 4th most common cancer in men and 6th most common cancer overall with over 80,000 new cases in the US per year. The most common causes of bladder cancer are smoking and it is usually found in patients over the age of 50. By the time it is diagnosed, the disease is often advanced since there are few warning signs other than seeing blood in the urine.

Screening is currently accepted practice for colon, cervical, and breast cancer. However, there is not an accepted screening methodology for bladder cancer. Bladder cancer is currently detected in 2-5% of patients who have microhematuria on routine urinalysis, a cheap, non-invasive test obtained by many primary care physicians. Bladder cancer diagnosed by microscopic blood on urinalysis is often lower stage than patients diagnosed with visible blood. Urine testing, therefore, offers a simple screening mechanism that can be tailored to patients at higher risk for bladder cancer based on age, tobacco exposure and other risk factors. In conjunction with routine traditional urinalysis testing, there are advances in urine molecular markers which utilize protein and genetic alterations resulting in a higher sensitivity and specificity for the detection of bladder cancer. Markers have not been evaluated for screening in high-risk populations, and there is a gap in knowledge of the most accurate screening method.

Early detection of bladder cancer has the potential to identify disease at an earlier stage resulting in a lower burden of treatment, improved quality of life, and improved survival.

This study will prospectively screen patients at high risk for the development of bladder cancer at bi-annual intervals with a commonly available urinalysis test that assess for microhematuria and urine based molecular markers.

This is a single arm study. The outcomes from the experimental arm will be compared to a historical control (bladder cancer detected by standard of care using SEER registries).