Advances in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Genitourinary Cancers

Overview & Synopsis

Genitourinary cancers are diseases affecting an increasing number of people, the diagnosis and treatment of which are currently undergoing fast and sometimes dramatic changes due to the current landscape of suboptimal management of these diseases. A characteristic feature of urological cancer treatment is the significant heterogeneity of patients (including different stages of local advancement, different locations of metastases, the heterogeneity of pathological findings, etc.). Therefore, in modern urologic oncology, there remains the unmet need of predicting the response to modern treatments, and new diagnostic methods, including but not limited to point-of-care diagnostics, represent a challenge to current guidelines and require verification. Additionally, further development awaits as far as sufficient neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment in the perioperative setting are concerned. However, recent advancements in systematic treatment, i.e., immunotherapy, have shed light on new treatment paradigms to be implemented in various clinical scenarios, including localized disease, and recent progress in minimally invasive surgical techniques has lead to revisions to the treatment of many urological tumors.