Diminishing the Gender-Related Disparity in Survival among Chemotherapy Pre-Treated Patients after Radical Cystectomy—A Multicenter Observational Study

There is a well-documented problem of inferior outcome of muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) after radical cystectomy (RC) in women. However, previous studies were conducted before neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) was widely adopted to multidisciplinary management of MIBC. In our study, we assessed the gender-related difference in survival between patients who received NAC and those who underwent upfront RC, in two academic centers. This non-randomized, clinical follow-up study enrolled 1238 consecutive patients, out of whom 253 received NAC. We analyzed survival outcome of RC according to gender between NAC and non-NAC subgroups. We found that female gender was associated with inferior overall survival (OS), compared to males (HR, 1.234; 95%CI 1.046–1.447; p = 0.013) in the overall cohort and in non-NAC patients with ≥pT2 disease (HR, 1.220 95%CI 1.009–1.477; p = 0.041). However, no gender-specific difference was observed in patients exposed to NAC. The 5-year OS in NAC-exposed women in ≤pT1 and ≥pT2 disease, was 69.333% 95%CI (46.401–92.265) and 36.535% (13.134–59.936) respectively, compared to men 77.727% 95%CI (65.952–89.502) and 39.122% 95%CI (29.162–49.082), respectively. The receipt of NAC not only provides downstaging and prolongs patients’ survival after radical treatment of MIBC but may also help to diminish the gender specific disparity.