An Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) in Urology, Lynn Casey, has started a new ANP-led Non-MuscleInvasive Bladder Cancer (NMIBC) Surveillance Clinic at Tallaght University Hospital.
TUH is the second hospital in the country to provide this service. The first clinic was set up at Galway University Hospital.
Before this service opened. Lynn was trained in carrying out a test called flexible cystoscopy which she uses at this new Surveillance Clinic to evaluate patients for bladder cancer.
Many other hospitals are now in the process of introducing a similar service. As well as providing care in a timely fashion, the clinic frees up valuable Consultant clinic space to see new patients and decrease waiting lists.
Bladder cancer is the tenth most common cancer worldwide. It affects about 520 people in Ireland each year. More common in men than women, around one-quarter of Bladder Cancer cases, are muscle invasive, which require systemic chemotherapy and/or immunotherapy, radical treatment (cystectomy or radiotherapy), or palliation.
