According to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, smokers who have bladder cancer don’t believe that their disease is connected with tobacco smoking.

The anti-smoking researchers said that urologists and other physicians need to do a much better job of telling patients about the risk of smoking and encourage them to quit.

James E. Montie, M.D., Valassis Professor of Urologic Oncology at the U-M Health System, said: "The general public understands that cigarette smoking can lead to lung cancer, but very few people understand that it also can lead to bladder cancer."

Montie noted that in the first four years after a smoker quits, the risk of developing bladder cancer decreases by 40 percent.

Montie and his colleagues found that most patients who already had bladder cancer were, like the general public, are unconscious of the link between smoking and bladder cancer. In a study they wrote that only 22 percent of patients with the disease were aware that smoking was a risk factor.

"A big gap exists between patient knowledge and their actual risk. Our study suggests that physicians must do a much better job of communicating the risk to our patients, and directing them toward smoking cessation programs," said Seth A. Strope, M.D., MPH, clinical lecturer in the U-M Department of Urology.

Today bladder cancer is one of the most costly cancers to treat, so the burden of the disease affects not only patients and their families but also the nation's health care financing system.

According to the National Cancer Institute, whites get bladder cancer twice as often as African Americans and Hispanics, and men are two to three times more likely than women to get bladder cancer.

Researchers added that now there is a more dependable, less expensive test to detect bladder cancer earlier.