Radiation Cystitis Review Article

RC patients and their loved ones are often interested in learning as much as possible about the condition including any treatment or management options available - and these patients often reach out. Unfortunately, we are unable to recommend treatment options because that is a conversation to be had with your healthcare provider. That said, there are ways to learn more about the latest research and my favorite way is to review articles on Pubmed.gov (the NIH's library of academic papers).

Use of Pubmed is free and easy, just search for a disease and filter by date/journal/topic. Its the fastest way to gain access to all the latest research on a topic. Many of the articles published are "abstract only" meaning you have to pay for the full article - the good news is there are many articles that are free and you can filter by these in the Pubmed search menu.

Now to the point. Although this research is somewhat dated (from 2010) its one of the only free review articles on the management of radiation cystitis. The title is "Management of Radiation Cystitis" - link to the article is here. It is long and comprehensive and outlines many care options. I found it very informative. Please keep in mind some of the options in the article are highly experimental at the time of publication and more recent research may have disputed or supported their use. Always do follow-up research and discuss any option with your healthcare provider.

If you have any thoughts on Pubmed or the article mentioned let us know in the comments! Have you found a helpful article yourself? Feel free to share as well!

Update: For those interested, the image shows the appearance of radiation cystitis via a cystoscope device (a tiny camera to used to monitor bladder conditions).