About Bladder Cancer Surgery

Surgery is an effective treatment for bladder cancer, especially in the disease’s early stages. Treatment goals for bladder cancer surgery are to:

• Eliminate as much of the cancer as possible by removing the bladder and a margin (narrow border of surrounding tissue) of healthy tissue
• Relieve symptoms of cancer such as pain or bleeding from the bladder

Scraping out of the cancer (with a procedure known as TURBT) may be the only treatment required for non-invasive, early-stage cancers with a low risk of recurrence. For non-invasive cancers that have a high risk of recurrence, drug therapy is sometimes used after TURBT.

In cases in which cancer is invasive or aggressive, more extensive surgery to remove the entire bladder may be recommended.