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When you or a loved one is diagnosed with bladder cancer, one of the first things you want to know is the prognosis — what to expect in the future — and the survival rate — how long people with the same type and stage of cancer usually live.
The survival rate of bladder cancer can depend on many factors, including:
No two people with bladder cancer are the same. In this article, we’ll explain how different factors can affect your prognosis.
Bladder cancer survival rate refers to the percentage of people with bladder cancer who are still alive after a certain amount of time. The most common way to measure survival rate is the five-year relative survival. This compares how many people are alive five years after their diagnosis to people in the general population, helping to show how cancer affects survival.
In the U.S., the National Cancer Institute (NCI) tracks cancer survival rates through the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. This database looks at survival statistics from the past several years to estimate survival rates based on the stage of cancer.
Survival rates are helpful, but they don’t tell the whole story of your prognosis. These rates are based on data from people who were diagnosed and treated at least five years ago, so they may not reflect recent advances in bladder cancer treatments. Also, these rates only apply to the stage of cancer at diagnosis and don’t take into account factors like age, overall health, or how the cancer responds to treatment.
Newer treatments for bladder cancer may improve your outlook. It can take several years to see the effect of new treatments on the survival statistics.
Bladder cancer survival rates depend on the stage, or how far the cancer has spread. These rates are tracked using the SEER program. However, this program doesn’t use the TNM system that’s commonly used in bladder cancer staging. You can learn more about bladder cancer stages here.
Instead, SEER divides bladder cancer stages into the following SEER stages, which are based on how far the cancer has spread:
Non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) and muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) may be considered localized, regional, or distant types of bladder cancer, depending on where the cancer has spread.
The five-year relative survival rate for all SEER stages of bladder cancer is 78.4 percent. When broken down by stage, the five-year relative survival rates are as follows:
While the stage of your bladder cancer is an important factor for figuring out your prognosis, it’s not the only thing that matters. Your health care provider will also take other individual factors into account.
Most survival statistics for bladder cancer are based on urothelial carcinoma, the most common type. But other types of bladder cancer have different survival rates.
Squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common type of bladder cancer, making up between 3 percent to 5 percent of cases. This type of bladder cancer usually has a poor prognosis, with a five-year survival rate of 28 percent to 40 percent. Adenocarcinoma of the bladder also has a poor prognosis, with a five-year survival of about 36 percent.
In general, older age at the time of bladder cancer diagnosis is linked with worse outcomes compared to younger adults. This is an important consideration because older age is a risk factor for developing bladder cancer. About 90 percent of people diagnosed with bladder cancer are older than 55, and half of them are 73 or older.
A 2023 study using SEER data found that people 75 years or older at the time of bladder cancer diagnosis had a shorter overall survival compared to people diagnosed at 54 years or younger. After five years, 55 percent of elderly people with bladder cancer in the study had died. Researchers found that about 30 percent of people died from a cause directly related to bladder cancer.
In comparison, around 15 percent of people in the study diagnosed with bladder cancer at age 54 or younger had died after five years. Almost 13 percent of those deaths were related to bladder cancer.
Although bladder cancer is more common in men, women with bladder cancer may be more likely to have worse outcomes.
Worse survival rates in women are likely because women are more often diagnosed with advanced bladder cancer. Studies have found that women are also more likely to have to wait longer for a referral to a specialist (urologist) and for further testing for bladder cancer. Compared to early-stage bladder cancer, advanced bladder cancer needs more intensive treatments and has worse outcomes.
Additionally, health care providers may be less likely to suspect bladder cancer in women compared to men. Instead, health care providers may suspect that other conditions, such as urinary tract infections (UTIs), are the cause of the bladder cancer symptoms.
When researchers study new bladder cancer treatments, they look at survival rates to see if the treatments are helping people live longer. Treatments that improve survival rates are usually recommended. Below, we’ll review how both common and new treatments can affect survival.
When discussing your treatment options with your cancer care team, it’s important to ask about how each treatment might impact your prognosis.
One common bladder cancer treatment is transurethral resection of the bladder tumor (TURBT) followed by intravesical chemotherapy. This type of chemotherapy is given directly into your bladder through a catheter, usually within 24 hours after surgery. Various studies have found that this treatment reduces the risk of bladder cancer coming back after treatment (recurrence). While it can also improve survival in older adults with NMIBC undergoing TURBT surgery, it does not affect overall survival.
Cisplatin (Platinol) is a standard treatment that’s given before bladder cancer surgery (called neoadjuvant therapy). Several studies have found that people with MIBC who receive cisplatin live about 5 percent longer than those who don’t receive this treatment.
Trimodality therapy is a treatment option for people with MIBC that hasn’t spread to other parts of the body who don’t want to or can’t have a radical cystectomy (bladder removal surgery). It combines TURBT with chemotherapy and radiation therapy to kill cancer cells.
A 2023 study found that the five-year survival rates were about the same for people who received trimodality therapy and those who had a radical cystectomy.
Immunotherapy is a type of treatment that uses your own immune system to kill cancer cells. In recent years, several new immunotherapy drugs have been approved to treat bladder cancer because they have been shown in clinical trials to significantly increase survival. Immunotherapy drugs that can increase survival rates in people with bladder cancer include:
These medications are usually used for people with advanced or metastatic bladder cancer. It’s important to note that not everyone with bladder cancer will qualify for these treatments. Talk to your cancer care team to find out if an immunotherapy treatment may improve your outlook.
Targeted therapies are drugs that work by targeting specific changes in cancer cells. One example is erdafitinib (Balversa), a targeted therapy that can improve survival in people with advanced or metastatic bladder cancer when compared to chemotherapy alone.
MyBladderCancerTeam is the social network for people with bladder cancer and their loved ones. On MyBladderCancerTeam, members come together to ask questions, give advice, and share their stories with others who understand life with bladder cancer.
Have you discussed your prognosis with your cancer care team? Share your experience in the comments below, or start a conversation by posting on your Activities page.
Maybell Nieves, M.D.
graduated from Central University of Venezuela, where she completed medical school and general surgery training.
Learn more about her here.
Amanda Jacot, Pharm.D
earned a Bachelor of Science in biology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2009 and a Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Texas College of Pharmacy in 2014.
Learn more about her here.
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