Bladder cancer that invades the muscle layer below the bladder mucosa or even the fat outside the bladder is called muscle-invasive bladder cancer and is a lethal disease, and few people can escape the death trap set by this demon without timely or proper treatment. When bladder cancer has not yet invaded beyond the bladder (i.e., confined to the bladder), radical cystectomy (which includes the bladder, prostate (in women, the uterus, adnexa, and part of the vagina), peri-bladder fat and lymphatic tissue, and lymph nodes in the pelvis) and urinary diversion surgery can cure most (70%-80%) patients. If radical treatment is not received in time and the tumor invades outside the bladder or metastasizes to distant sites before radical cystectomy is performed, the surgical results will be very poor and most patients will still die of bladder cancer recurrence or metastasis after surgery, especially for bladder cancer with distant metastases, the average survival time is only about 12 no matter how it is treated, and less than 10% of patients respond well to treatment and can be lucky to live beyond 5 years.
For these reasons, radical cystectomy and urinary diversion surgery should be pursued as much as possible as long as physical condition allows, to maximize the chance of long-term survival.