Understanding intravesical chemotherapy for bladder cancer patients

Bladder cancer is a common malignant tumor of the urinary system. The main treatments for bladder cancer are open resection or transurethral resection with bladder preservation. Since the recurrence rate after bladder preservation surgery is about 60%-70%, it is advocated to use intravesical chemotherapy after surgery to inhibit the malignant development of the tumor.

The ideal therapeutic effect of intravesical chemotherapy is that the drug can quickly reach an effective drug concentration in the bladder epithelium, and the systemic absorption is small, with little adverse effect on the body. At present, there are two types of bladder chemotherapy drugs: one is biological preparations, including BCG, interferon, etc.; the other is chemical drugs, such as mitomycin, doxorubicin, etc. The former can prevent tumor recurrence and infiltration by inducing the body's immune function; the latter can prolong the time of tumor recurrence. Things to note are that some chemical drugs are highly irritating to the skin and penis. When undergoing intravesical instillation treatment, you must strengthen protection to avoid damage to the body.

Bladder instillation should be performed in the morning. The patient should empty the bladder before the procedure to achieve the best therapeutic effect. After the drug is injected into the bladder, various body positions should be changed, such as lying flat, lying on the left side, lying on the right side, lying prone, etc. This is conducive to the comprehensive contact of the drug with various parts of the bladder to improve the therapeutic effect.

After instillation, the drug should be kept in the bladder for 2 hours and then discharged naturally. Pay attention to observe whether there are side effects such as tenderness and hematuria. If the bladder irritation symptoms are more obvious after instillation, you can take some Chinese medicine, such as Zhibai Dihuang Decoction, to relieve it. For patients with more severe chemotherapy reactions, they can also be treated with Chinese medicine during chemotherapy. The principle of Chinese medicine treatment should be to tonify the kidney, strengthen the spleen and benefit the lungs, and to promote dampness and stop bleeding, clear heat and stop bleeding, and detoxify and remove blood stasis to reduce the toxic and side effects of chemotherapy and improve the patient's ability to tolerate chemotherapy.