Transurethral resection of bladder tumor and the need for re-transurethral resection of bladder tumor: time to change our practice?

Purpose of review To summarize the current knowledge on the role of repeated transurethral resection of the bladder (re-TURBT) at the light of recently published trials that indicate the possibility to safely avoid it in well selected patients. Recent findings Recently published trials tried to predict the histology of re-TURBT with the aim of improving patients' selection for this procedure. The en bloc resection technique seems to improve the quality of the resection, thereby diminishing and even eliminating the risk of upstaging and the residual disease rate after TURBT. Moreover, the introduction of multiparametric MRI (mpMRI) in bladder cancer showed initial promising results and aims, in the next future, to play a role in the selection of patients for re-TURBT. Summary International guidelines agree to recommend re-TURBT in case of incomplete first resection and in T1 tumors. Conversely, the performance of re-TURBT in case of high-grade/high-risk Ta or in case of absence of detrusor muscle in TURBT specimen remains a matter of debate. Re-TURBT aims to reduce the risk of understaging the disease and to remove residual disease in case of persistent nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer. Actually, upstaging at re-TURBT is not a negligible event in T1 tumors (8-15%), while is quite uncommon in case of Ta tumors (0.4%). Residual disease at re-TURBT is usually found in the majority of patients (55-60%) and seems to impact oncological outcomes, even if recent evidence mitigated its relevance as prognostic factor.