At present, radical cystectomy is a mainstay in the management of all bladder cancers, whether of conventional urothelial histology or variant.
However, in the case of some variants, it is clearly not enough and multimodal therapy is an imperative. In other cases, systemic therapy might be ineffective or even detrimental if it leads to delay in surgery (ie, squamous cell carcinoma). Thus, identification of variant histology is a critical part of bladder cancer staging because such histology may require appropriately tailored therapy.
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Willis D, Kamat AM. Are you the author?
2The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 1515 Holcombe Boulevard, Unit 1373 Houston, TX 77030, USA.
Reference: Hematol Oncol Clin North Am. 2015 Apr;29(2):237-252.
doi: 10.1016/j.hoc.2014.10.011
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 25836932