Objective: To study biopsy quality, complications and patient acceptance when urinary bladder biopsies were taken under local anaesthesia.
Patients and methods: Multiple large cold-cup urinary bladder biopsies were taken under topical lignocaine anaesthesia in 20 patients who had previously undergone transurethral resection for superficial bladder cancer.
Results: The procedures were carried out at the outpatient clinic with 0.5-2 h post-operative observation. Patient acceptance was very high and complications were minimal. The quality of the biopsies was consistently high and influenced treatment in the majority of the patients.
Conclusion: In our department multiple bladder biopsies (mapping) have previously always been performed as a transurethral resection under general or spinal anaesthesia. Operation under intravesical lignocaine anaesthesia with 2 h post-operative observation reduced the costs by 70%.