Impact of symptomatic recurrence on oncological outcomes in patients with primary high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

OBJECTIVES:To evaluate the impact of symptomatic recurrence on oncological outcomes in patients with primary high-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) who underwent transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT). MATERIALS AND METHODS:We retrospectively evaluated 428 patients with primary high-risk NMIBC who underwent TURBT from November 1993 to April 2019. Of the 428 patients, 140 had experienced recurrence at any site and were divided into 2 groups: patients who had experienced recurrence detected by the surveillance (asymptomatic group) and patients who had experienced recurrence detected by a symptom-driven investigation (symptomatic group). Background-adjusted multivariable analyses with the inverse probability of treatment weighting method were performed to evaluate the impact of symptomatic recurrence on cancer-specific survival and overall survival after first recurrence in patients who had experienced recurrence. Moreover, multivariable analysis was performed to identify predictive factors of symptomatic recurrence in the entire cohort. RESULTS:Median age and follow-up periods were 72 (interquartile range [IQR] 64-79) years and 55 (IQR 29-96) months, respectively. Of the 140 patients who experienced recurrence, 106 (76%) were diagnosed by the surveillance (asymptomatic group) and 34 (24%) were diagnosed by a symptom-driven investigation (symptomatic group). In the background-adjusted multivariable analyses with the inverse probability of treatment weighting model, symptomatic recurrence was significantly associated with shorter cancer-specific survival along with shorter overall survival after first recurrence. In the multivariable analysis, only tumor grade was selected as a significant predictive factor of symptomatic recurrence after TURBT. CONCLUSIONS:Symptomatic recurrence was significantly associated with poor oncological outcomes in patients with primary high-risk NMIBC. Patients with grade 3 tumors may require more intensive surveillance after TURBT.