Clinical outcomes of patients with pT0 bladder cancer after radical cystectomy: a single-institute experience.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the clinical outcomes of patients who underwent radical cystectomy for bladder cancer at a single institution and compare those who had pT0 specimens with those who had residual cancer. METHODS From January 1990 to December 2006, 186 patients underwent radical cystectomy with or without neoadjuvant chemotherapy for cT2 or higher stage urothelial carcinoma in the bladder in our hospital. We estimated the 5-year disease-free survival, cancer-specific survival and overall survival by the pathological stage. RESULTS The median follow-up of the 186 patients was 38.5 months (0-194). Of these, 51 received neoadjuvant chemotherapy. For all subjects, the 5-year disease-free survival was 54.9%, cancer-specific survival 61.0% and overall survival 57.1%. Of the 186 patients, 24 (12.9%) had no residual cancer in the bladder specimen at radical cystectomy. Of the 24 patients with pT0, only 1 (4.2%) died of bladder cancer. The 5-year disease-free survival, cancer-specific survival and overall survival rates in patients with pT0 were ∼96.0%. We found pT0 histology in 11 of the 51 patients (21.6%) with neoadjuvant chemotherapy and in 13 of the 135 patients (9.6%) with radical cystectomy alone (P = 0.047). CONCLUSIONS We demonstrated that the outcomes of patients who underwent radical cystectomy were similar to those in previous reports. Patients with pT0 showed favorable outcomes for disease-free survival, cancer-specific survival and overall survival in our study. However, they should be periodically followed up because pT0 does not always mean cure.