Eighty-five bladder cancers were treated at the Urology Clinic of Nancy and the Centre Alexis Vautrin from 1975 to 1992 with short course preoperative radiation therapy (3 x 3.5 Gy), conservative surgery and brachytherapy by iridium-192. The tumours were classified according to the 1979 UICC pTNM classification. There were 27 pT1, 31 pT2 and 22 pT3, two pT4 and three pTx. The pT1-pT2 cases received only one brachytherapy (50 Gy at least) after the short course preoperative irradiation. The pT3 cases received only 30 Gy of brachytherapy and an external irradiation boost (generally 40 Gy to the node areas and 30 Gy to the tumour, but the dose varied during the time course). Surgery was often preceded by an endoscopic resection consisting of a tumoral resection or a partial cystectomy according to the localisation. The plastic vector tubes were put into place at the time of partial cystectomy. Until 1983 the radioactive wires were loaded into the vector tubes on the day following surgery, thereafter it was done one week later. The 85 patients were classified into two groups: 63 patients who were untreated previously and 22 patients who had received one or more endoscopic resections for recurrences. The median follow-up was 84 months. The local controls at 5 years were 78% in the first group versus 56% in the second group (p = 0.005) with an overall survival of 73 and 65%, respectively. The local control did not vary according to the differentiation (grade 1/2 vs. grade 3). The local control for pT1, pT2, pT3 was 85, 64 and 70% with a specific survival of 85, 76 and 72%, and an overall survival of 78, 66 and 66%. Among early complications, delay in healing of the bladder wall with subsequent vesico-cutaneous fistula depends mainly on the loading time of radioactive wires after surgery and is rare if the loading is delayed by one week. The late complications depend mostly on dosimetric factors. We found 24 grade 1, three grade 2, four grade 3 and one grade 4. The following factors are significant: the surface treated (> 14 cm2), a distance between the sources of more than 2 cm and, especially, activity of the wires of more than 2 mCi/cm (this factor was found in the five complications of grade 3 and 4), the other factors were not significant in univariate analyses.