Radiotherapy of distant metastases in urological tumours

The largest subgroup of patients with metastasised urological malignancies are those with metastases of the bone. Lesions of bones frequently reduce t he patients quality of life. Therefore a sufficient therapy is crucial. Fir st of all the appropriate diagnostic procedure of the lesion/lesions is nec essary because e the right choice of diagnostic measures may already improv e quality of life. Besides the most frequently used local irradiation a sys temic radiotherapy may be the adequate therapy in patients with disseminate d disease. Renal cell-, bladder and penile cancer respectively are the urol ogical malignancies frequently metastasising into the brain. Adequate diagn ostic procedures and therapy are crucial to the patients quality of life fo r the remaining lifetime. Besides a whole brain irradiation as standard the rapy stereotactic radiotherapy is a high precision tool to destroy intracer ebral tumour. There are many other locations of metastatic disease (i. e. l ymph node or soft tissue metastasis, et cetera) where palliative external b eam irradiation may provide relief from symptoms such as pain, lymph oedema or bleeding and thus increase quality of life. Psychological and social ca re are of great value besides symptom oriented therapy (i. e. radiotherapy, drugs, et cetera) to achieve an optimal palliation/quality of life.