Reply to Association between treatment of superficial bladder cancer and 10‐year mortality in older adults with multiple chronic conditions

Abstract

I read Garg et al's article 1 with some interest. However, I am concerned by the use of the term superficial bladder cancer in the title and throughout the article. For more than 15 years, urologists worldwide have been moving away from this term when describing disease at International Union Against Cancer stages Tis, Ta, and T1 (American Joint Committee on Cancer stage I or lower): the term is simply misleading for all of the reasons described elsewhere. [2][3][4][5][6] The professional associations of most countries adopted the term non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer some years ago, and they include the European Association of Urology and the American Urological Association with their influential clinical guidelines. 7,8 It is now time for journal editors and associate editors to also play their part when assessing manuscripts so that the term superficial bladder cancer can be eliminated from medical terminology. FUNDING SUPPORTNo specific funding was disclosed. CONFLICT OF INTEREST DISCLOSURESRichard T. Bryan has contributed to advisory boards for Olympus Medical Systems with respect to narrow-band imaging cystoscopy; in addition, he has a patent pending concerning the prognosis of bladder cancer. REFERENCE 1. Garg T, Young AJ, O'Keeffe-Rosetti M, et al. Association between treatment of superficial bladder cancer and 10-year mortality in older adults with multiple chronic conditions. Cancer. 2018;124.