The purpose is to analyze patients with superficial bladder cancer who failed the initial therapy with oral BCG and underwent immunoprophylaxis with intravesical BCG. A total of 13 patients with grade 2 pT1 transitional cell carcinoma or carcinoma in situ without other concurrent malignancies had tumour recurrence with oral BCG therapy. We report our experience with 6 patients treated with intravesical BCG after failure of previous oral BCG immunotherapy. A quantitative deoxyribonucleic acid study using static cytometry was employed to analyze tumour ploidy. All were aneuploid tumours. 2 (33.3%) patients were free of cancer during the 21-month mean observation period and 4 (66.7%) had recurrence during a mean follow-up of 24 months. Two patients showed tumour progression. There were no major complications. Our results suggest that superficial transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder with aneuploid DNA values, even if treated more aggressively with intravesical BCG, do not show good results.
