Carcinomatous meningitis from transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder: case report

In the past decade, there has been an increasing awareness of central nervous system metastases as a frequent complication of some malignancies, particularly in lung, breast and hematologic cancers. However, the central nervous system remains an uncommon location for metastases from certain primary tumors including those from the genitourinary system. We report on a patient with transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder who was treated with combination chemotherapy, and during the course of his disease developed carcinomatous meningitis. We anticipate this unusual complication of bladder transitional cell carcinoma will be seen more frequently, especially in the light of available data from effective chemotherapeutic regimens. We report this patient to alert physicians to this complication and to consider using prophylactic measures in responding patients as is the case in other malignancies.