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Potentially curative treatments for patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) are underused, especially in the elderly. Trimodality bladder preservation therapy, which includes a maximally safe transurethral resection of the bladder tumor, followed by concurrent chemoradiation, fulfills this currently unmet need. In multiple prospective clinical trials and large institutional series, trimodality therapy has demonstrated excellent 5-year overall survival rates of 48% to 65%, comparable to those reported in cystectomy studies. Approximately 75% to 80% of long-term survivors maintain their native bladders, which tend to function well and allow patients to maintain excellent quality of life. Salvage cystectomy for patients who develop a local invasive recurrence can be performed with acceptable operative complication rates, and results in excellent long-term disease control and survival outcomes. For patients with MIBC who are noncystectomy candidates, or select patients who are motivated to keep their native bladders, trimodality bladder preservation therapy is recognized by the International Consultation on Urological Diseases-European Association of Urology and the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology for Bladder Cancer as an effective alternative to radical cystectomy, and should be considered. In the future, biomarkers may allow improved selection of patients for whom trimodality bladder preservation therapy is most likely to succeed.

NCCN Guidelines recommend active surveillance as the primary management option for patients with very-low-risk prostate cancer and an expected survival of less than 20 years, reflecting the favorable prognosis of these men and the lack of perceived benefit of immediate, definitive treatment. The authors hypothesized that care at a multidisciplinary clinic, where multiple physicians have an opportunity to simultaneously review and discuss each case, is associated with increased rates of active surveillance in men with very-low-risk prostate cancer, including those with limited life expectancy. Of 630 patients with low-risk prostate cancer managed at 1 of 3 tertiary care centers in Boston, Massachusetts in 2009, 274 (43.5%) had very-low-risk classification. Patients were either seen by 1 or more individual practitioners in sequential settings or at a multidisciplinary clinic, in which concurrent consultation with 2 or more of the following specialties was obtained: urology, radiation oncology, and medical oncology. Patients seen at a multidisciplinary prostate cancer clinic were more likely to select active surveillance than those seen by individual practitioners (64% vs 30%; P<.001), an association that remained significant on multivariable logistic regression (odds ratio [OR], 4.16; P<.001). When the analysis was limited to patients with an expected survival of less than 20 years, this association remained highly significant (72% vs 34%, P<.001; OR, 5.19; P<.001, respectively). Multidisciplinary care is strongly associated with selection of active surveillance, adherence to NCCN Guidelines and minimization of overtreatment in patients with very-low-risk prostate cancer.