I wrote an articles regarding the lack of change in the method of collecting urine from the stoma in bladder cancer patients. The full article can be read here.
When the pouch was first invented in the 1920‘s, bladder cancer patients were only surviving for a few month or perhaps a year or two after the surgery.
Today, the advances in surgical technique and especially in the field of chemotherapy have been fantastic. The advances in public education has gotten the public to be more aware of bladder cancer and to seek medical advice much earlier.
The combination of these three factors means that bladder cancer is being caught in the early stages of the disease.
Therefore patients are living much longer after their surgery.
This is great but …
Some of us, including myself, who are heading towards the 10 years mark since surgery are running into skin problems under the pouch. Imagine having a large bandage glued to your body 24/7 for close to 10 years. The skin is constantly moist with either urine or sweat.
The human skin was not meant to be subjected to this kind of treatment. The skin his not being allowed to breath properly and rejuvenate itself.
Since last January, I have been having more and more skin problems around the stoma. Talking to others who are reaching their 8 to 10 year survival mark, they are running into the same problem. If you have a parastomal hernia, as I have, your problems seem to be compounded.
Yes, the stoma could be moved to the other side of the abdomen, but is this going to solve the problem if we happen to live another 10 years? If you have a parastomal hernia on the first site, the stoma can never be moved back. I feel that if my parastomal hernia could be repaired, my problems would decrease dramatically. The success rate with these hernia repairs is less than 10%.
The Medical Community and the manufacturers of pouches need to revisit ‘the glued on pouch’ and come up with a more skin friendly method of collecting the urine from the stoma.
So far, those of us who are having this problem, are on our own.
We would appreciate help from the Medical Community and the Urostomy pouch Manufacturers.
Posted on July 15th, 2008 by Neil
Filed under: Bladder Cancer - Background, My Cancer, Problem - Skin Peeling
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