Late oncological occurrences following radical cystectomy in patients with bladder cancer

PURPOSE: To evaluate the prognoses and predictive factors of late oncological occurrences and its impact on follow-up strategy in patients with bladder tumours treated with radical cystectomy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Late oncological occurrences were considered when they took place after three years from cystectomy or when early recurrence was controlled with therapy and patients developed recurrence again after a three-year disease-free interval. Univariate and multivariate analysis of predictive factors for late oncological occurrences were carried out on 215 patients at risk of late oncological recurrences. RESULTS: Among 357 patients treated with cystectomy, 163 (45.6%) relapsed, 149 (41.7%) of them as early recurrence and 17 (4.7%) were considered as late oncological events. This incidence increased up to 8% when patients at risk were considered. Three patients with early recurrence reached a complete response after treatment and relapsed again as late recurrences. Distant metastases and local recurrence represented 78.5% of early recurrence as opposed to 11.7% in late oncological occurrences, whereas, extravesical urothelium recurrences represented 8.6% and 70% respectively (p<0.01). Among patients with late oncological occurrences, nine (53%) were disease-free, seven with urothelial recurrence and two of three with lymph-node recurrence whereas only eight (5.6%) patients with early recurrence were free of tumour (p<0.0001). Multiple tumours, prostate involvement and organ-confined tumours in cystectomy specimen were the independent variables for predicting late oncological occurrences in multivariate analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Recurrences in the remaining urothelium prevail as the pattern of late oncological occurrences. The prognosis of these events is significantly better than an early recurrence. Patients at risk of late oncological occurrences are those with multiple tumours, prostate involvement and with organ-confined tumours in cystectomy specimen. After three years from cystectomy, the follow-up schedule of these patients be limited to performing an annual CT-scan and urinary cytology to detect essentially upper urinary tract recurrence and extrapelvic lymph-nodal recurrence. Afterwards an annual intravenous urography might replace to CT-scan since lymph-nodal involvement was not detected.