Randomized trial of fenretinide in superficial bladder cancer using DNA flow cytometry as an intermediate end point.

Retinoids have shown a potential activity in preventing tumor recurrence in superficial bladder cancer. We assessed the activity of the synthetic retinoid fenretinide in superficial bladder cancer using DNA flow cytometry and conventional cytology as surrogate biomarkers. A total of 99 subjects with resected superficial bladder cancer (pTa, pT1) were randomized to either fenretinide (200 mg day p.

Assessment of DNA flow cytometry as a surrogate end point biomarker in a bladder cancer chemoprevention trial.

Although conventional cytology represents the most widely performed cytometric analysis of bladder cancer cells, DNA flow cytometry has, over the past decade, been increasingly used to evaluate cell proliferation and DNA ploidy in cells from bladder washings. We have investigated whether DNA flow cytometry and conventional cytology of epithelial cells obtained from bladder washings provide reliable surrogate endpoint biomarkers in clinical chemoprevention trials. We used cytometric and clinical data from a chemoprevention trial of the synthetic retinoid Fenretinide on 99 patients with superficial bladder cancer.

[Liquid embolization of the renal artery with absolute ethanol].

Absolute ethanol is a new agent for use in embolization which has demonstrated excellent efficacy, is simple to manage, and above all is innocuous in case of reflux into the aorta. A part from provoking irreversible occlusion of the complete renal artery circle, embolization with ethanol provokes direct cellular toxic necrosis comparable with a true mummification. This is of fundamental importance during palliative embolization for renal cancer or in all cases of medical nephrectomy for non-neoplastic disease.

[Histological follow-up after implantation of grains of I-125 for prostatic cancer].

The authors report a preliminary study of 12 cases of carcinoma of the prostate confined to the prostate (T1, T2, T3, NO, MO) treated by pelvic lymphadenectomy and the implantation of grains of I 125 in the prostatic tissue. Irradiation continued for six months, providing most dose of 100 Gy in the prostate. Interstitial irradiation caused not only the destruction of tumour cells but also "radiation prostate" lesions with vascular obliteration which itself caused sufficient impairment of the vitality of the prostatic tissue for any residual tumour to disappear with a frequency which increased with the time elapsing between the follow up prostatic biopsy and the implantation of radioactive iodine.

[Embolization of the inferior mesenteric artery in hemorrhagic bladder neoplasms after failure of hypogastric arteries embolization].

The authors report 3 cases of revascularisation through the inferior mesenteric artery of bladder tumors which had previously been treated by transcatheter occlusion of both hypogastric arteries because hemorrhage. New uncomplicated embolizations of the inferior mesenteric artery are performed in 2 cases and recurrency of the bleeding was stopped.