Abstract
Background: To assess the differential effect of robotic assisted radical cystectomy (RARC) versus open radical cystectomy (ORC) on survival outcomes in matched analyses performed on a large multicentric cohort. Methods: The study included 9757 patients with urothelial bladder cancer (BCa) treated in a consecutive manner at each of 25 institutions. All patients underwent radical cystectomy with bilateral pelvic lymphadenectomy. To adjust for potential selection bias, propensity score matching 2:1 was performed with two ORC patients matched to one RARC patient. The propensity-matched cohort included 1374 patients. Multivariable competing risk analyses accounting for death of other causes, tested association of surgical technique with recurrence and cancer specific mortality (CSM), before and after propensity score matching. Results: Overall, 767 (7.8%) patients underwent RARC and 8990 (92.2%) ORC. The median follow-up before and after propensity matching was 81 and 102 months, respectively. In the overall population, the 3-year recurrence rates and CSM were 37% vs. 26% and 34% vs. 24% for ORC vs. RARC (all p values > 0.1), respectively. On multivariable Cox regression analyses, RARC and ORC had similar recurrence and CSM rates before and after matching (all p values > 0.1). Conclusions: Patients treated with RARC and ORC have similar survival outcomes. This data is helpful in consulting patients until long term survival outcomes of level one evidence is available.
Highlights
Bladder cancer (BCa) is the second most common genitourinary malignancy with 81,190 estimated new diagnoses for 2018 in the United States alone [1]
Patients treated with robotic assisted radical cystectomy (RARC) were more likely treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) (26% vs. 3.6%) compared to patients treated with open radical cystectomy (ORC) and had less advanced diseases
420 (33%) patients were treated with RARC and 840 (67%) with ORC; no differences were recorded between ORC and RARC patients considering age, gender, NAC usage, pathological T stage, pathologic grade, and lymph node invasion
Summary
Bladder cancer (BCa) is the second most common genitourinary malignancy with 81,190 estimated new diagnoses for 2018 in the United States alone [1]. Radical cystectomy (RC) with bilateral pelvic lymph node dissection (PLND) is the standard treatment for muscle invasive and very high risk non-muscle invasive BCa [2] This procedure is associated with significant perioperative mortality and morbidity as a direct consequence of the complexity of the procedure and the characteristics of the population which is generally older and suffering from multiple comorbidities when compared to other surgical patients [3]. Robotic-assisted radical surgery in urology has been shown to be associated with decreased blood loss, need for transfusion, and length of stay compared to open RC (ORC) in most studies [4,5,6,7,8,9,10] While these perioperative benefits are generally accepted, the differential impact of RARC compared to ORC on survival outcomes remains debated with widely diverging opinions [4,11,12]. This data is helpful in consulting patients until long term survival outcomes of level one evidence is available
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