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Purpose: American Joint Committee on Cancer staging represents the gold standard for prediction of recurrence after radical cystectomy in patients with invasive bladder cancer. We tested the hypothesis that American Joint Committee on Cancer stage based predictions may be improved when pathological tumor and node stage information is combined with additional clinical and pathological variables within a prognostic nomogram., Materials and Methods: We used Cox proportional hazards regression analysis to model variables of 728 patients with transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder treated with radical cystectomy and bilateral pelvic lymphadenectomy at 1 of 3 participating institutions. Standard predictors, pT and pN, were complemented by age, gender, tumor grade at cystectomy, presence of lymphovascular invasion, presence of carcinoma in situ in the cystectomy specimen, neoadjuvant chemotherapy, adjuvant chemotherapy and adjuvant radiotherapy. The concordance index was used to quantify the accuracy of regression coefficient based nomograms. A total of 200 bootstrap resamples were used to reduce overfit bias and for internal validation. Calibration plots were used to graphically explore the performance characteristics of the multivariate nomogram., Results: Followup ranged from 0.1 to 183.4 months (median 24.9, mean 36.4). Recurrence was recorded in 249 (34.2%) patients with a median time to recurrence of 108 months (range 0.8 to 131.9). Actuarial recurrence-free probabilities were 69.6% (95% CI 65.8%-73.0%), 60.2% (55.8%-64.3%) and 52.9% (47.3%-58.1%) at 2, 5 and 8 years after cystectomy, respectively. Two-hundred bootstrap corrected predictive accuracy of American Joint Committee on Cancer stage based predictions was 0.748. Accuracy increased by 3.2% (0.780) when age, lymphovascular invasion, carcinoma in situ, neoadjuvant chemotherapy, adjuvant chemotherapy and adjuvant radiotherapy were added to pathological stage information and used within a nomogram., Conclusions: A nomogram predicting bladder cancer recurrence after cystectomy is 3.2% more accurate than American Joint Committee on Cancer stage based predictions. Moreover, a nomogram approach combines several advantages such as easy and precise estimation of individual recurrence probability at key points after cystectomy, which all patients deserve to know and all treating physicians need to know.

Purpose: The effect of bladder cancer histological subtypes other than transitional cell carcinoma (nonTCC) on clinical outcomes remains uncertain. We conducted a multi-institutional retrospective study of patients with bladder cancer treated with radical cystectomy to assess the impact of nonTCC histology on bladder cancer specific outcomes., Materials and Methods: A total of 955 consecutive patients underwent radical cystectomy with bilateral pelvic lymphadenectomy for bladder cancer at 3 academic institutions. TCC was present in the radical cystectomy specimen in 888 patients (93%). NonTCC histology was present in 67 patients (7%), including squamous cell carcinoma in 26, adenocarcinoma in 13, small cell carcinoma in 10 and other nonTCC subtypes (ie spindle cell carcinoma, carcinosarcoma and undifferentiated carcinoma) in 18. For patients alive at last followup median followup was 39 and 23 months for patients with TCC and nonTCC histologies, respectively. Bladder cancer specific progression and survival were assessed using Kaplan-Meier and multivariate Cox proportional hazards analyses., Results: Bladder cancer specific progression and mortality did not differ significantly between patients with SCC and TCC histologies. Patients with nonTCC and nonSCC bladder cancer were at significantly increased risk for progression and death compared to patients with TCC or SCC (p <0.001). This association remained statistically significant in patients with organ confined disease (stage pT2 or lower) and patients with nonorgan confined disease (stage pT3 or higher) (p <0.001). In a multivariate analysis nonTCC and nonSCC histology was associated with an increased risk of bladder cancer progression and death (OR 2.272 and 2.585, respectively, p <0.001), even after adjusting for final pathological stage, lymph node status, lymphovascular invasion and neoadjuvant or adjuvant treatments., Conclusions: NonTCC and nonSCC histological subtype is an independent predictor of bladder cancer progression and mortality in patients undergoing radical cystectomy for bladder cancer. Patients with bladder TCC and SCC share similar stage specific clinical outcomes.