Although surgery is the mainstay of curative treatment of carcinomas of the penis and urethra, there is a role for systemic cytotoxic chemotherapy for locally advanced, unresectable, or metastatic tumors. Although this field is limited by a paucity of clinical trials or prospective data, the available single institutional retrospective reviews indicate that multi-agent cisplatin-based combination chemotherapy regimens have significant activity and may allow curative surgery for patients with otherwise unresectable tumors. Toxicity remains a concern in this typically older patient population, and clearly new regimens are necessary. This article reviews the available literature on chemotherapy for carcinoma of the penis and urethra in the neoadjuvant, adjuvant, and metastatic setting.
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