Abstract. The aim of this study was to investigate the outcome of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) receiving neo-adjuvant chemotherapy (neo-CT) using a cisplatin-based regimen fractionated on days 1 and 8 of a 21-day cycle prior to organ-preservation (chemoradiation) or cystectomy. Patients with stage T2-T4, N0, M0, transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the bladder with a calculated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) ≥40 ml/min were eligible for inclusion in the study. Neo-CT comprised of gemcitabine (1,000 mg/m 2 d1, d8, q21) plus cisplatin (35 mg/m 2 d1, d8, q21) for four cycles. Following the administration of neo-CT, patients underwent surgery or radiotherapy (RT) with or without concurrent chemotherapy (CRT), based on the response to neo-CT and clinician and patient preference. A total of 23 patients were recruited: 21 males and 2 females; median age, 69 years (range, 49-85); stage T2=11, T3A=7, T3B=5, grade 2=1, grade 3=22. One patient progressed prior to neo-CT. In total, 75 cycles of neo-CT were administered. Treatment was well-tolerated with only one episode of neutropenic sepsis. Three of 22 patients developed early progression and did not receive radical treatment. For the remaining 19 patients, choice of definitive treatment (surgery vs. RT/CRT) was based on response to neo-CT. Eight patients had residual disease at cystoscopy following the completion of neo-CT; six patients underwent surgery and two underwent RT/CRT. A total of 11 patients had a complete response (CR) to neo-CT, nine of whom were treated by RT/CRT, with the remaining two declining radical treatment. Median follow-up for alive patients was 57 months (range, 4.4-68.5). Three-year survival was 37% (95% CI 17-58%) and 5-year survival was 31% (95% CI 15-52%). Neo-CT is effective and well-tolerated in MIBC. This split-dose cisplatin regimen facilitates treatment in an outpatient setting and allows inclusion of patients with compromised GFR.
IntroductionBladder cancer is the second most common genitourinary malignancy and is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Almost 25% of patients have muscle-invasive disease at presentation (1,2). In North America, the treatment of choice for muscle invasive bladder cancer is radical cystectomy and bilateral pelvic lymph node dissection. Although surgery may be curative, approximately 50% of all patients with muscle invasive transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) develop metastatic disease within 2 years of cystectomy and subsequently succumb to the disease, presumably due to a significant proportion of patients harboring micrometastatic disease (3). On this basis, neo-adjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy have been tested in numerous phase II and a few phase III studies (4-7).There are two principal rationales for neo-adjuvant chemotherapy: i) to improve survival in patients with micrometastatic disease and ii) to preserve the bladder by shrinking the primary tumour to facilitate radiotherapy as an alternative definitive therapy to surgery (8). The results of the South Western Oncol...