Multimodal organ-sparing treatment strategies have shown similar survival rates when compared to radical surgery for muscle-invasive bladder cancer; however, up to 80% of surviving patients retained their own, well-functioning bladder. Within an interdisciplinary bladder-preserving treatment protocol, concurrent chemoradiotherapy was superior to radiotherapy alone—supporting its use as an alternative to radical cystectomy.
Key Points
Multimodality treatment of muscle-invasive bladder cancer including limited surgery (transurethral resection) and chemoradiation proved feasible and effective in a recent multicentre phase III trial and showed superiority to radiotherapy alone. This approach underlines its role as an alternative treatment to radical cystectomy, at least for selected patients.
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Weiss, C., Rödel, C. Chemoradiation superior in muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 9, 374–375 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2012.92
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2012.92
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