TURBT stands for Transurethral resection of bladder tumour. This is usually undertaken under General anaesthetic or spinal anaesthetic. Spinal anaesthetic involves numbing the bottom half of your body, so you won’t feel the procedure. It utilises a camera system that passes through your urethra which is the opening of your water pipe. This allows us to directly examine the inside of your bladder. We have special instrument that we can remove bladder growth from the bladder without making an incision. The benefit of the procedure are: 1) to remove the bladder tumour and hopefully that will treat your bladder cancer all together. 2) It also gives us the diagnosis, which is to look at how serious the tumour is. 3) also treating your local symptoms such as bleeding.

After the operation you will wake up and return to the ward with a catheter usually it stays in for twenty four to forty eight hours. It gives us the opportunity to give you a single dose of chemotherapy into your bladder through the catheter, to reduce risk of cancer returning. Secondly, allow us to observe the colour of the urine, so we know there is no bleeding. Most of the patient can go home after twenty four to forty eight hours.