Metastatic bladder cancer, cystectomy or radiothherapy?
Hi all,
My dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer last summer. He had removed part of the tumor and were about to do a cystectomy when they found out that the cancer had migrated to his bones.
He started treatments with emfortumab vedotin and pembrolizumab and the tumor in his bones went down significantly! However the tumor in his bladder remained stable in size for all this time (~7 months), but around a month ago they did pet scan and mri and saw that it increased. He also started having hematuria since February so made sense.
The doctors now have given us two choices. Either doing cystectomy or radioherapy. However, they said that they have noticed that when patients undergo cystectomy the cancer spreads significantly afterwards and if that won't happen to him he will be the exception. On the other hand if he does radiotherapy, there is a chance that it won't work and after that the doctors are not able to do the cystectomy anymore because the tissue becomes like a mass (?) and the tissues connect with each other, making it hard to seperate. I live in a different country so i didn't had the chance to go to the appointments with him so I am just transfering his words.
We are puzzled and don't know what is the best option to do next.. I know every case is different, but does anyone has any input or experience with what we could do to better determine what choice is better for him?
Thank you all!