Bladder cancer tumors are divided into superficial bladder cancer (Tis, Ta, T1) and invasive bladder cancer (T2, T3, T4) depending on the infiltration depth, and the treatment methods for the two types differ greatly.
For superficial bladder cancer, endoscopic transurethral resection of the bladder tumor (TUR-BT) is performed, while for invasive bladder cancer, total cystectomy is the standard treatment.
However, the decrease in quality of life (QOL) after total cystectomy is a major problem, and the 5-year survival rate is less than 60% even after total cystectomy.
In recent years, it is becoming necessary to improve the QOL even in patients who have had total cystectomy.
Therefore, it is extremely important to develop a bladder-preserving therapy with high thera-peutic effect from the standpoint of emphasizing QOL in the treatment of local muscle-invasive bladder cancer.
However, bladder cancer is highly sensitive to chemotherapy, and bladder-preserving chemo-radiotherapy has been performed for about 30 years.
Chemoradiotherapy is also favored by the NCCN guidelines, and our hospital administers chemoradiotherapy + intra-arterial infusion chemotherapy in what we refer to as the OMC-regimen (Osaka Medical College bladder-preserving therapy) as a tetra-modality therapy.
In this paper, we first review the history of treatments with systemic chemotherapy (neo-adjuvant, adjuvant) and chemoradiotherapy (systemic chemotherapy+radiotherapy, in-tra-arterial infusion chemotherapy+radiotherapy) that have been performed at many facilities to date.
Next, we explain in detail the treatment methods, results, and their place in the blad-der-conserving therapy referred to as the OMC-regimen, which is a combination of TURBT, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and intra-arterial infusion chemotherapy.
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