Surgical management of superficial bladder cancer (stages Ta/T1/CIS)

Transurethral surgery is the primary treatment for patients with superficial bladder cancer. Either electrical or laser thermal destruction is used most often but there is no proven therapeutic benefit for one method over the other. Treatment failure is usually a consequence of new tumor occurrence rather than the failure to eradicate existing visible tumors. Adjuvant intravesical chemotherapy or immunotherapy improves results over surgery alone in most circumstances.