Last updated on August 29th, 2017 at 10:56 am

When it comes to bladder and kidney cancer, it’s a simple message ‘look before you flush’ but it could save your life.

If you don’t check, you may not notice blood in your pee is the message from Public Health England and the NHS in their work to increase the earlier diagnosis of cancer.

Look for signs of bladder cancer and kidney cancers

The Be Clear on Cancer  symptom awareness campaign, running from 15 February to 31 March 2016, is a national reminder for ‘blood in pee’ as a sign of bladder and kidney cancer.

The campaign, to encourage more people with the symptoms to go and see their GP early, is aimed primarily at men and women over the age of 50 from lower socio-economic groups.

Symptoms of bladder and kidney cancers

Bladder and kidney cancers are the seventh and eighth most commonly diagnosed cancers. Blood in your pee is a key symptom in over half of bladder cancers and almost a fifth of kidney cancers but other symptoms include:

Bladder cancer:

• cystitis (a urinary tract infection) that is difficult to treat or comes back quickly after treatment
• pain while peeing

Kidney cancer:

• a pain in the side, below the ribs, that doesn’t go away
• weight loss

Facts

It has been stated in the British Journal of Cancer that the UK has poorer cancer outcomes than many other western countries. This is due partly to delays in diagnosing symptomatic cancer which in turn leads to the cancer being at a more advanced stage at diagnosis.

17,450 people are diagnosed with bladder or kidney cancer every year, with around 7,600 people dying each year.

Put simply, early detection saves lives:

• For those diagnosed at the earliest stage (stage 1), the likelihood of surviving five years or more is 84 per cent for kidney cancer and 77 per cent for bladder cancer.
• For those diagnosed at a late stage (stage 4), the survival rate is poor – only 10 per cent for kidney cancer and 9 per cent for bladder cancer.

This campaign first ran in 2013.  It was found that the campaign raised, awareness and, importantly, that there was a significant increase in the number of bladder and kidney cancers diagnosed at the pre-cancerous and early stage, and a reduction in late stage diagnoses for bladder cancer.

How can Graysons help?

Unfortunately, whilst a small element of delay is inevitable in all cancer diagnostic pathways, a significant delay in diagnosis is not always caused simply by a late presentation of symptoms to your GP. You may have attended your GP on a number of occasions when he failed to carry out a thorough examination, or failed to notice the warning signs and urgently refer you to a specialist. There may have been a failure to read the investigative results by your GP, or the hospital may not have performed the correct investigations or may have incorrectly reported the investigative results.

Here at Graysons we recognise the devastating, and in some cases fatal, effect that a delayed diagnosis of cancer can have. We understand the importance of compensation to you as it can greatly improve quality of life for you and your family and provide the care and security that is needed.

If you would like to talk to a member of our specialist team then please contact us for a confidential and free discussion today.

You can find out more about the failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis of cancer on our web pages.