Markers for Diagnosis and Progression in Bladder Cancer

Abstract

Bladder cancer is a common disease that is often detected late and has a high rate of recurrence and progression. The current standard of care for the primary detection and follow-up of NMIBC consists of urethro-cystoscopy associated with cytology. However, several clinical risk factors have been claimed to predict recurrence and progression, these factors have a predictive value on a population basis, but no parameter has been found that reliably predicts how an individual patient’s tumor will behave. In the last years many markers have been described in order to decrease the number of cystoscopies and try to provide individualized risk-stratified decision-making. We have focused our review in tumor markers for primary diagnosis, surveillance of non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer, and predicting progression to muscle-invasive disease. After our review, we can conclude that to the date no non-invasive biomarker has proven to be sensitive and specific enough to replace cystoscopy, neither in the diagnosis nor in the follow-up. On the other hand, promising results have been reported of potential biomarkers for predicting recurrence, early progression and poor response to BCG, new studies should be promoted to validate these results and make possible to incorporate markers as a new tool in clinical guidelines.