OBJECTIVES: Bladder cancer (BC) is the fourth most common malignancies among men and it has high medical costs per-patient from diagnosis until death. Generally little is known about the burden BC imposes on patients' health-related quality of life (HRQL) and the literature lacks detailed utility data for economic evaluations in BC. The authors' goal was to assess the HRQL and health status utility of BC patients. METHODS: A cross sectional survey was performed in three hospital based urology centres. Adult patients with BC attending routine care were invited to participate in the study. Data on demographics, disease history and co-morbidities were obtained, validated versions of the EQ-5D and SF-36 generic questionnaires were applied. The UK tarrifs were used to calculate EQ-5D score and the SF-36 was converted to SF-6D utilities. Disease-specific HRQL was assessed by the FACT-BL questionnaire. RESULTS: Altogether 98 patients (males 63.3%) were involved with mean age of 66.4 (SD=8.6) and disease duration of 3.4 (SD=3.0) years. The SF-36 physical and mental health summary measures were 62 (SD=24), 65 (SD=24), respectively, the scores of the 8 domains were comparable to the >65 years old general population’s results. The average SF-6D, EQ-5D and EQ VAS utility scores were 0.705 (SD=0.145), 0.772 (SD=0.252) and 68.8 (SD=19.0). The difference of EQ-5D score compared to the age-matched population norm was not significant (p=0.65). The FACT-BL physical, social, emotional and functional well-being scores were mean 23.1 (SD=5.4), 20.6 (SD=5.7), 18.1 (SD=5.1) and 19.0 (SD=6.7), the total score was 114.0 (SD=23.5). CONCLUSIONS: According to our knowledge this study is the first to assess BC patients’ HRQL using diverse preference based measures. Further studies involving larger samples might increase our knowledge on the performance of these questionnaires in BC subgroups by disease stage, type of treatment and urinary diversion.