Intravesical recurrence after bladder sparing treatment of small cell carcinoma of the bladder: Characteristics, treatment, and outcome

SCCB is a serious potentially lethal disease. Even in patients with LD-SCCB a high percentage rapidly develops systemic disease. This suggests that systemic therapy is more important than the type of local treatment to control the disease but small sample sizes limit the ability to distinguish between different treatment options in this study. A bladder sparing approach can be a reasonable alternative to major surgery. However, in those surviving long enough isolated intravesical recurrence occurs even after many years. Our results indicate that long term follow up is required because salvage therapy can be successful in the majority of patients.