Small cell carcinoma of bladder: A single-center prospective study of 25 cases treated in analogy to small cell lung cancer

Primary Small Cell Carcinoma of the Urinary Bladder - Mini-review of the Literature

“…However this should be interpreted with caution as the good performance status needed for cisplatin based chemotherapy may bias the results associating cisplatin with improved survival. Bex et al in his study reported a median survival period of 15 months in patients who received chemotherapy regardless of the tumor stage compared to 4 months median survival period in patients not on chemotherapy (Bex et al, 2005). While considering treatment options for mixed SCCB i.e.…”

Management of small cell carcinoma of the bladder: Consensus guidelines from the Canadian Association of Genitourinary Medical Oncologists (CAGMO)

“…The second most common approach to treat LD was combined chemotherapy and radiation ( Table 2, Table 3). Both (chemotherapy+surgery and chemotherapy+radiation) resulted in a clinical response and/or downstaging of disease: 57% for neoadjuvant chemotherapy in the retrospective analysis by Siefker-Radtke and colleagues; 29 78% in the phase II study done by the same authors, 31 and 100% and 85% for chemoradiation in the retrospective study 38 and prospective study by Bex and colleagues, 28 respectively.…”

“…14,22,23,25 However, the natural history of SCCB is more aggressive and is associated with poorer prognosis than UCB. Therefore, in most cases, SCCB will be locally advanced or metastatic [20][21][22][23][26][27][28][29] at diagnosis and follow a pattern of metastases similar to UCB. The most common sites of spread are regional and distant lymph nodes, liver and bones.…”

“…20,22,23 However, SCCB more commonly coexists with other histologies, such as urothelial carcinoma, adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and sarcomatoid-urothelial carcinoma. 20,28,38 Patients with a small cell component to their bladder tumour have a worse clinical outcome than patients with conventional UCB. 15,29,24,39 In addition, patients with a pure SCCB have a median overall survival for nonmetastatic, metastatic or recurrent disease (4.5-9.5 months) that is 2 to 3 times shorter compared to mixed SCCB.…”

“…68 The only prospective studies were a non-randomized phase II study 31 and a single-centre study of 25 cases treated in a fashion analogous to SCLC. 28 The National Cancer Care Network (NCCN) 69 was the only identified guideline which included SCCB.…”