Evaluation of imaging methods in the diagnosis of vesical tumours

Literary data and personal experience furnished ground for assessing the value and determining the proper employment of imaging methods as used in the detection of bladder carcinoma. It seems highly advisable to perform native radiography and excretion urography. Upon the recording of a transabdominal echogram, intravesical ultrasonography, performed under narcosis simultaneously with biopsy and cystoscopy, constitutes an ideal complement to the latter and has proved to be the most effective diagnostic method to detect a carcinomatous infiltration of the bladder wall. Extravesical propagation is assessed with the help of CT whose degree of reliability increases in proportion with the progression rate of the tumour. Foot-dorsum type lymphography only visualizes juxtaregional lymph nodes, endovesical lymphography the regional ones. Additional modes of metastasis detection include chest X-ray, liver-spleen scintigraphy and bone scintigraphy. Uretero-entero-anastomosis must be preceded by irrigoscopy.