Urothelial Bladder Carcinoma in Students at a Dental Technical College: A Report of 3 Cases

Abstract

Bladder cancer is one of the main types of neoplasia affecting men, with the highest incidence reported toward the end of the seventh decade of life. Unlike other malignancies, bladder cancer is attributable to specific widely occurring carcinogenic risk factors in 60–70% of cases, and numerous professions have been linked to higher rates of the disease. The present study includes the cases of three male graduates (mean age, 23 years) from the same dental technical college, two of whom were students at the Faculty of Dental Medicine of the Iași University of Medicine and Pharmacy (Iași, Romania) at the time of diagnosis. The individuals were occupationally exposed for a mean of 43.66 months. Histopathological examinations following resection indicated the presence of benign lesions (1 case) and malignant lesions of low aggressiveness (2 cases). The patients’ outcomes were favorable, and there was no tumor recurrence over a mean observation period of 56 months. The aim of the present study was to highlight the young age at which these patients developed bladder tumors under similar etiological conditions and over short periods of exposure to known occupational risk factors. This shorter time of exposure to risk factors makes it even harder to establish causality with the occurrence of bladder tumors. However, the present cases could lead to a suspicion of a direct association between the exposure and the tumors or an entirely coincidental occurrence.