Value of tumor’s depth and width in predicting survival rate in non-muscle- invasive (pT1) bladder cancer

Abstract

Background: Bladder cancer is classified according to traditional American Joint Committee on Cancer TNM staging. In the absence of nodal (N stage) or distant metastases (M stage), the depth of tumor invasion (T stage) is the most important determination to be made: whether the tumor is invading into or beyond the lamina propria (muscle-invasive bladder cancer) or not (non- muscle-invasive bladder cancer). This study investigated the association between the cutoff value of tumor depth and width and survival rate in non-muscle- invasive (pT1) bladder cancer. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort design of randomly selected, single- centered study. The subjects were patients with pT1 urothelial carcinoma who were diagnosed on transurethral resection of bladder specimens at a tertiary hospital in West Java, Indonesia. The research sample was taken by consecutive sampling from 2015 to 2019. Results: Sixty-four patients from were included in this study. A tumor depth >2 mm resulted in a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.41 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.27–3.94; p<0.007), with significant difference. A tumor width >2.4 mm also increased HR significantly (3.27; 95% CI, 1.69–5.87; p<0.006). The presence of lymphovascular invasion (LVI) in patients with bladder cancer resulted in an HR of 3.66 (95% CI, 1.5–4.77; p<0.001), with statistically significant difference in overall survival (OS). Conclusion: Tumor invasion depth, tumor width, and LVI appear to be predictive of poor prognosis in terms of OS in patients with pT1 bladder cancer.