I Can’t Get Chemotherapy to Treat My Bladder Cancer – Now What? with Dr. Guru Sonpavde

Episode 15 of the Bladder Cancer Matters podcast is about a challenge facing many bladder cancer survivors: some patients cannot get chemotherapy to treat their bladder cancer. Its special guest is Dr. Guru Sonpavde, the Bladder Cancer Director at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

At Dana-Farber, Dr. Sonpavde leads multiple cutting-edge clinical trials studying novel immunotherapy and targeted drugs to cure bladder cancer. He is the also the national or international Principal Investigator of multiple clinical trials of bladder cancer patients. Additionally, he is a member of the BCAN Scientific Advisory Board.

In this podcast, Rick and Dr. Sonpavde discuss:

• What are the different types of chemotherapy for bladder cancer?
• Why are some more effective than others?
• Chemotherapy is the standard treatment for many muscle-invasive and metastatic bladder cancer patients, but for some patients, this is not even an option. In bladder cancer, who gets platinum chemo?
• Suppose I can’t have chemo. Can I have surgery? Would some of the things that make me ineligible for chemo make me ineligible for surgery?
• So if I am ineligible, what are my alternatives today? What are their rates of success?

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You can follow Dr. Sonpavde on Twitter using his handle, @Sonpavde.