Cancer-specific survival in patients with urothelial carcinoma of the bladder with recurrence after radical cystectomy: External validation of the prognostic risk stratification model.

Abstract

325 Background: Prognosis of the patients with urothelial carcinoma of the bladder (UCB) who developed recurrence after radical cystectomy (RC) is generally poor, but can be variable. We previously showed that shorter time to recurrence (TTR) after RC, presence of symptoms on recurrence, more than one metastatic sites (organs), high serum C-reactive protein (CRP) level were associated with decreased survival in those patients, and proposed a model to stratify patients into 3 separate risk groups (Nakagawa et al. J Urol. 2013; 189:1275). The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of this model in a multi-institutional cohort of patients. Methods: We identified 267 patients who experienced disease recurrence after RC for UCB from 9 academic and community hospitals. Patients were categorized into three groups based on the presence of four risk factors, TTR of <1 year, presence of symptoms on recurrence, more than one metastatic sites (organs), and CRP level of ≥0.5 mg/dl: the favourable risk group included patients with none or one of these risk factors; the intermediate risk group with 2 risk factors; and those with 3 or 4 risk factors were assigned to the poor risk group. Results: Overall, median survival time (MST) of the entire cohort was 8.3 months (95%CI, 6.4-9.1). Two hundred and nineteen patients died of their disease with a median survival of 5.9 months. In a multivariate analysis, all of the 4 risk factors were statistically significant for the cancer-specific survival. Sixty-five (27.4%), 84 (35.4%), and 88 (37.1%) patients were in the favorable, intermediate and poor risk group, respectively. Thirty patients were excluded because CRP value was not obtained. MSTs of the patients in the favorable, intermediate and poor risk group were 22.2 (95% CI 16.1-28.3), 7.6 (95% CI 6.3-9.5), and 3.6 (95% CI 2.6-4.4) months, respectively, and the difference was statistically significant (p<0.001, log-rank test). Conclusions: We confirmed the prognostic value of our previous criteria based on the four variables in patients with recurrence after RC for UCB. This criteria would help in patient counseling and clinical trial design.