Review

The approaches in uncommon malignant tumours of the bladder

  • Hayrettin Şahin

Bull Urooncol 2012;11(1):14-18

Aim:

Of malignant bladder tumours, 90-95% are transitional cell carcinoma and the remaining 5-10% are composed of mesenchymal and/or epithelial tumors of other histological types. The aim is to update the recent publications on these uncommon malignant tumours of the bladder.

Findings:

The clinical presentation is common to all bladder tumours (urothelial and/or not) and is essentially characterized by gross hematuria and irritative voiding symptoms. There is no specific staging system for non-urothelial tumours and the TNM classification is generally applied. Most of uncommon malignant tumours of the bladder are diagnosed at an advanced stage and require aggressive treatment with radical surgery combined in some cases with adjuvant or neoadjuvant therapy. But, they have generally poor outcomes.

Result:

Th systematic investigation of most uncommon malignant tumours of the bladder is limited by rarity of these tumours. Therefore, national or international registry will be necessary to advance our understanding of these tumours, evaluate treatment strategies and optimaze patient outcome in the future.

Keywords: bladder cancer, squamous cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, rare cancer