Bladder cancer in men and women treated by radiation therapy and/or radical cystectomy

Four-hundred fifty-one patients with bladder cancer, 348 men and 103 women, were treated by radiation therapy and/or radical cystectomy during the last two decades at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Radical cystectomy alone was the treatment in 98 men and 39 women. Radical radiation therapy to an average tumor dose of 6,000 rad in six weeks was given to 79 men and 30 women ± one year before salvage cystectomy was done for recurrent or persistent tumors. Planned preoperative irradiation was delivered to the true pelvis either 4,000 rad in four weeks in 95 men and 24 women or 2,000 rad in one week in 76 men and 10 women ± six weeks and two days, respectively, before radical cystectomy. Over-all survival and recurrence results in both sexes were similar; 40 per cent of men and 36 per cent of women were alive at five years without recurrence, 45 per cent of men and 48 per cent of women died in five or more years with local and/or distant recurrences, and 21 per cent of men and 15 per cent of women died before five years from causes other than cancer recurrence. Higher five-year survival for high clinical stage B₂ to D₁ tumors was noted similarly in the irradiated men (30 per cent) and women (37 per cent) than in the cystectomy alone patients (19 per cent in men and 4 per cent in women). Similar survival rates (52 to 57 per cent) were observed in men and women with low clinical stage O to B1 tumors treated with or without irradiation.