Feline Bladder Cancer

Bladder cancer in cats is a form of cancer that could either be categorized as a squamous cell carcinoma, an adenocarcinoma, or another type of carcinoma.



Cat bladder cancer is usually suspected in older cats that end up having recurring urinary tract infections. Other signs that your cat could have a cancer of the bladder would be when you notice that the animal spends a lot of time trying to urinate but a very small volume of urine actually does come out. Hematuria, or blood in the urine, is a common problem that can also occur if there is a case of bladder cancer.

Bladder cancer is usually identified and diagnosed when the above symptoms are seen and then further diagnosis is done by blood tests, urinalysis, and sometimes even a biopsy. Blood tests will be used to search for specific tumor markers that are roaming free in the blood. A tumor marker is a specific antigen that identifies the specific tumor.



Squamous cell carcinomas are cancers that occur in the squamous epithelial layer of organs. The epithelial layer is the outer most layer of any organ that forms the skin of the organ. A cancer in this region is called a squamous cell carcinoma. The other type of common cancer is called an adenocarcinoma. An adenocarcinoma is a type of a tumor that occurs in the endocrine glands or in any of the secreting organs. Again, the cancer itself will mostly grow on the epithelial layer of the organ in question. The common methods of dealing with a case of bladder cancer is to use chemotherapy and sometimes with the use of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs or NSAIDS. These are used specifically when dealing with yet another type of tumor called a Transitional cell carcinoma.

Cancer treatments usually consist of the use of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, surgery, and on the fringes of science, reolysin therapy. Of these, reolysin therapy is one that is very curious. This is because of the ability of the reolysin virus to specifically target tumor cells and then in the natural course, the virus will destroy the cell. This therapy has been used but unfortunately, it lies on the fringes of medicine and it is still very restricted in use because of the prohibitive cost of treatment. However, one can expect that this just could become the method of treatment in the future for dealing with tumors.