At home screening may reduce deaths from bladder cancer in men over fifty years of age. Bladder cancer is diagnosed in as many as 60,000 individuals annually in the United States and is much more common in the elderly.
Cancer of the bladder has a high cure rate if detected early enough, however, the cure rate gets much lower if the cancer spreads and metastasizes to other parts of the body. One way to diagnose the disease is to detect microscopic amounts of blood in the urine.
A trial was conducted including 1,575 men who did not have bladder cancer and were over fifty. The men underwent home screening with the use of small strips of a paper-like substance, called reagent strips. A little over 8 percent of patients who underwent screening were diagnosed with bladder cancer. At fourteen years follow-up, there were no deaths from bladder cancer among the men who underwent home screening compared with 20 percent among men who had not undergone screening.
The researchers conclude that at-home screening could indeed save lives because of early detection of bladder cancer.
