Diagnosis

This unit attends to patients diagnosed with tumors that affect the male reproductive system, as well as the urinary tract of both sexes, including cancer of the prostate, the bladder, the kidney, the testicle and other less frequent tumors, such as suprarenal gland cancer and penile cancer.

Most patients that come into our unit have already been diagnosed by a urologist, who based on the results of a biopsy or surgery, have referred the patients to IOB in order to receive integral treatment with a multidisciplinary team specialized in the treatment of genitourinary cancer.

Also, just as in other units of IOB, the Genitourinary Cancer Unit offers a service of second opinion for patients that are under oncological treatment at other centers.

Integral care

The multidisciplinary team is made up of oncological doctors, oncological radiotherapists, urologists, specialists in anatomical pathology, radiodiagnostics and nuclear medicine, as well as nursing staff specialized in this type of tumor.

In addition to this, IOB offers this integral care to our patients with specialists in psychology and psychiatry for the patient and their family, as well as individualized consultations in nutrition by top nutritionists and oriental medicine such as acupuncture and hypnosis for the treatment of anxiety and pain.

The medical committee shall meet periodically to discuss each clinical case and seek to optimize the prognosis of the disease as much as possible and to guarantee the patient’s quality of life.

The commitment of our multidisciplinary team is to minimize the time between the diagnosis and the moment when the patient begins receiving each and every one of the treatments they require, with the scheduling of all the complementary tests being handled by our team in a coordinated manner and at the same location, without the need to move from place to place and the security that comes with having support available over the phone 24 hours a day.

The team is led by the oncologists, Dr. Javier García del Muro and Dr. Fabricio Racca.

Treatment

The treatment depends on the histology. This study determines the tumor type, be it prostate adenocarcinoma; urothelial carcinoma, a carcinoma of the bladder and/or the urinary tract; renal cell carcinoma, whether clear cell, which is more or less frequent, or non-clear cell (type 1 papillary, type 2 papillary, chromophobe, Bellini duct, etc.). Alongside the histology, another fundamental factor is the stage of the tumor, whether localized or widespread. 

With this information, the patient is offered the best systemic treatment, which is a treatment that acts on the primary tumor as well as lesions that are distant from it (metastases).

In the same way, following assessment by a multidisciplinary committee evaluating whether it meets the respective clinical and analytical criteria, a localized tumor will be subjected to treatment with a combination of oncological drugs and surgical treatment. 

Our premise is to individualize the integral care of each patient and their illness with an approach that addresses the functional, nutritional, social, and control of symptoms areas. We have a person of reference for each of these areas (specialists in nutrition, psycho-oncology, psychiatry, acupuncture techniques and geriatric oncology for elderly patients).