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Cancer treatments can cause a range of bladder symptoms including urgency, frequency, leaking, and pain.

These symptoms might be a result of the cancer itself, treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy, or other medications.

Below we explain what these symptoms are and offer some advice on how to help manage them. Everyone may have different needs relating to their specific cancer or treatment, therefore it is advisable to check this advice with your healthcare team first.

If you have issues with continence of your bladder (e.g. leaking when you cough or sneeze, or not making it to the toilet on time), you can also have a look at our Continence tips page for additional practical advice.

This short film will discuss the below symptoms in more detail and suggest some helpful management strategies!

  • Frequency: the desire to go to the toilet many times in the day (over 5-7 times per day)
  • Nocturia: the desire to go frequently during the night (more than once per night)
  • Urgency: a sudden need to go to the toilet, which you feel you have little control over
  • Urge Urinary Incontinence: a sudden need to go to the toilet which may be followed by a leak of urine.

*The above symptoms all may happen due to having an overactive or irritated bladder, because of cancer treatments, or just bad toilet habits*

  • Stress Urinary Incontinence: when a physical stress on your bladder causes you to leak urine. This often happens when you cough, sneeze or during other activities such as exercise or sex. Weakness or poor control of your pelvic floor muscles may contribute to this.
  • Sometimes you might have a combination of urge and stress incontinence, which is often referred to as Mixed Urinary Incontinence.

For all types of bladder symptoms, it is important to follow good pelvic health habits follow the link for more information on what this involves.

For certain types of incontinence, the following additional suggestions may help. You can also find further information on the Continence page.

Stress incontinence

Pelvic floor muscle exercises will help strengthen your muscles, giving you more control over your bladder and bowels, please see the links below for our video on how to complete these exercises). The guidance we give within these videos relates to your anatomy.

We understand that some individuals may have some physical differences related to personal characteristics, injuries, surgeries, and different treatments that they may have undergone.

The Squeezy app

Squeezy

  • The ‘Knack’ is when you squeeze your pelvic floor muscles just before any effort to prevent a leak e.g. coughing, sneezing, or lifting something heavy

Urge incontinence:

  • Keep a bladder diary – to help you and your physiotherapist understand how your bladder is working, make a note of the following over a two to three day period (see the link / QR code below for an example diary on our website):
    • how much you drink
    • the amount of urine you pass
    • how often you pass urine or have a leak

Bladder retraining can help you to hold onto larger volumes of urine for longer, with less urgency or leakage. This should help you feel that you are in control of your bladder, rather than the bladder controlling you. Bladder retraining can take six to eight weeks to make a difference, so be determined and stick with it.

This video on bladder retraining describes it in more detail.

Bladder retraining tips:

  • When you get the urge to pass urine, try and hold on for just a minute or two to start with and gradually increase the time for which you hold on
  • Avoid going to the toilet just in case
  • Stay calm and relaxed – you can try breathing techniques to help with this
  • Squeeze and hold your pelvic floor muscles for 10 seconds
  • Distract yourself or keep yourself busy, to try and take your mind off the bladder, e.g. count back from 100 in 7s
  • Sit on a hard seat, cross your legs, curl your toes, or stand on tiptoes

What to do if your symptoms don’t improve

If you have tried the above advice consistently for 6-8 weeks and you have not started to see a change in your symptoms, or if your symptoms have worsened, please speak to your GP or treating clinician who can support you with this.

Depending upon your needs, your GP can refer you to the Community continence team, pelvic health physiotherapists or urology services in your area for further support.

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