[Clinical guidelines for diagnosing, treatment and monitoring patients with bladder cancer--Croatian Oncology Society and Croatian Urology Society, Croatian Medical Association]

Urothelial cancer is the most common bladder cancer. Hematuria is the most common presenting symptom in patients with bladder cancer. The most common diagnostics of bladder cancer is performed by transurethral resection of bladder after which pathohistological diagnosis is set. It is necessary to determine whether the cancer penetrated in muscle layer (muscle-invasive cancer) or not (muscle-noninvasive cancer). Decision on therapeutic modality depends on the clinical stage of disease and on prognostic and risk factors. For muscle non-invasive bladder cancer transurethral resection is preferred with or without intravesical instillation of Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG). For invasive cancer the method of choice is radical cystectomy. Radiotherapy is used in radical and palliative purposes. Metastatic disease is most frequently treated by chemotherapy metotrexate/vinblastine/doxorubicine/cisplatin (MVAC) or gemcitabine/cisplatin (GC). The purpose of this article is to present clinical recommendations to set standards of procedures and criteria in diagnostics, treatment and follow up of patients with bladder cancer in the Republic of Croatia.