Urological and urothelial cancers

About

Our urological and urothelial cancer service diagnoses and manages the treatment of prostate, kidney and bladder cancers. This service is linked to our germ cell and testicular cancer service.

Charing Cross Hospital’s urology department is the designated centre for urological malignancy (cancer) in the West London Cancer Network and is home to the West London Cystectomy Centre for bladder cancer. It is also the supraregional testis cancer centre and offers retroperitoneal lymph node dissection for post chemotherapy residual masses. We also lead on developing more effective and innovative methods of treating conditions and recently won the national Cancer Research Excellence in Surgical Trials (CREST) award for our performance in organising and recruiting to our trial's programme.

Conditions and treatments

We diagnose and treat prostate, kidney and bladder cancers using chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery as appropriate. Our service offers one-stop urological clinics, as well as weekly multidisciplinary clinics for prostate and bladder cancers and a unique diagnostic unit for bladder, prostate and urethra assessment.

Our state-of-the-art diagnostic and surgical equipment includes:

• custom-made urological laparoscopic (keyhole surgery) operating theatre
• laser ablation of recurrent bladder tumours in an outpatient setting, removing the need for a general anaesthetic
• cystoscopy (bladder camera) – in select cases may detect bladder tumours that may be missed by traditional techniques
• intravesical instillations unit for treatment of bladder tumours (filling of bladder with medication)
• we also provide state-of-the-art minimal invasive radical prostatectomy (surgical removal of the prostate) at St Mary’s Hospital using the Da Vinci robot, the first UK centre to establish a robotic radical prostatectomy programme. Other robotic operations are in evolution, including radical cystectomy (surgical bladder removal)

Further online resources

• British Association of Urological Surgeons – patient information