History of Transurethral Resection and Fulguration of Bladder Tumors

Abstract

Transurethral resection (TURB) is the essential surgical procedure used to diagnose, stage and treat bladder tumors. TURB is an ideal operation—focal, targeted, patient-centered, single-port, minimally invasive through a natural orifice (the urethra), safe, and repeatable. Urologists today are armed with a dazzling array of sophisticated endoscopic instruments. Modern flexible digital cystoscopes and video-assisted resectoscopes combine the essentials—access, superior optics, working elements, and energy—to detect, decipher and destroy tumors growing in the bladder. Current endoscopes provide magnified high-definition views of the bladder interior, permitting visual removal of bladder tumors using panoply of cutting loops, forceps or graspers and their targeted destruction by electrocautery or laser energy. The methods, means and skills we enjoy today began in the nineteenth century and refined in the 20th owing to collective genius and ingenuity of many surgeons, scientists, inventors, and visionary entrepreneurs.