Background: The role of total cystectomy was to be assessed in the curative treatment of muscle-invasive bladder cancer.
Methods: Two hundred and fifty-three patients with T2-T4a transitional cell carcinoma of the urinary bladder were referred to precystectomy radiation therapy (46 Gy, 66 patients; 20 Gy, 187 patients). These patients represented approximately 20% of all patients developing muscle-invasive bladder cancer in Southern Norway from 1980-1990. The clinical T categorization was generally based on palpability and extent of the palpable bladder tumor assessed by the referring urologist. Twenty-six patients (10%) did not have total cystectomy, most often due to peroperatively demonstrated locoregional inoperability. Two or three cycles of cisplatin-based combination chemotherapy were given to 68 patients.
Results: For the 227 patients who underwent cystectomy, the cancer-specific 5-year survival rate was 58% (T2 [104 patients], 63%; greater than or equal to T3 [123 patients], 54%) (P = 0.022). The comparable figure for patients with histologically proven regional lymph node metastases was 22%. The 97 stage-reduced cases (less than or equal to pT1) survived significantly longer than the 130 patients without stage reduction (74% versus 46%) (P < 0.0001). Neoadjuvant chemotherapy was correlated with a more favorable survival in patients with greater than or equal to T3 tumors but did not seem to influence survival of patients with T2 bladder cancer.
Conclusions: In a multicenter setting, prognostically relevant T categorization of operable muscle-infiltrating bladder cancer can be based on the palpability of the primary tumor. Approximately 50% of favorably selected patients with operable T2-T4 bladder cancer survived for at least 5 years independent of whether the operation was done at a large uro-oncologic unit or a smaller urologic section. In this retrospective review, chemotherapy seemed to improve the survival in patients with deeply infiltrating (greater than or equal to T3) bladder cancer but appeared to represent an overtreatment in patients with T2 tumors.