Intravesical BCG therapy in the management of multiple superficial bladder carcinoma. Comparison between Glaxo and Pasteur strains.

Intravesical Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) therapy in the treatment and prophylaxis of superficial bladder cancer has shown encouraging results in North America but disappointing results have been reported in Great Britain. This was attributed to differences in quality between BCG (Glaxo strain) used in Great Britain and BCG (Pasteur and Tice strains) used in North America. Twenty-one patients with multiple superficial recurrent transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder were entered into a pilot study comparing the efficacy of BCG Glaxo (Evans Medical Ltd, Dunstable, UK) and Pasteur (L'Institut Pasteur, France) strains. Comparable and encouraging results were demonstrated, indicating that this mode of therapy is effective.