Surgery versus radiotherapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer.
BACKGROUND
Muscle invasive bladder cancer is a serious clinical problem and is fatal for the majority of patients. Alternative treatments for this condition are radical cystectomy or radical radiotherapy. The choice of treatment varies according to the resident country. The ideal treatment would be a bladder preserving therapy with total eradication of the tumour without compromising survival.


OBJECTIVE
The objective of this review was to compare the survival after radical surgery (cystectomy) versus radical radiotherapy in patients with muscle invasive cancer.


METHODS
We searched the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (July 2000), Medline (July 2000), EMBASE (July 2000), Cancerlit (July 2000), Healthstar (July 2000) and the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness (July 2000). Attempts to contact authors of unpublished data were undertaken.


METHODS
Randomised trials comparing surgery versus radiotherapy were eligible for assessment.


METHODS
Three reviewers assessed trial quality based on the Cochrane Guidelines. Data was extracted from the text of the article or extrapolated from the Kaplan-Meier plot. The Peto odds ratio was determined to compare the overall-survival and disease-specific survival. Analysis was performed on an intention-to-treat basis and treatment actually received.


RESULTS
Three randomised trials comparing pre-operative radiotherapy followed by radical cystectomy (surgery) versus radical radiotherapy with salvage cystectomy (radical radiotherapy) were eligible for assessment. These trials represented a total of 439 patients, 221 randomised to surgery and 218 to radical radiotherapy. Peto odds ratio analysis consistently favoured surgery in terms of survival. It was significant at 3 (OR = 2.11, 95% CI 1.10,4.07) and 5 years (OR = 2.40, 95% CI 1.35, 4.29) for overall survival and at 3 years (OR = 1.96, 95% CI 1.06,3.65) for disease-specific survival for patients that actually received the protocol treatment. On an intention-to-treat analysis for disease-specific survival, the results were significantly in favour of surgery at 3 years (OR = 1.96, 95% CI 1.06,3.65) but not at 5 years.


CONCLUSIONS
The evidence from this review suggests that there is no overall statistically significant benefit to radiotherapy or surgery ( with pre-operative radiotherapy) in muscle invasive bladder cancer in terms of survival, but the trends consistently favour surgery.
Shelley
M D
MD
Research Laboratories, Velindre NHS Trust, Velindre Road, Whitchurch, Cardiff, Wales, UK, CF4 7XL. mike.shelley@velindre-tr.wales.nhs.uk
Barber
J
J
Mason
M D
MD
D016001:Confidence Intervals; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016017:Odds Ratio; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D016879:Salvage Therapy; D016019:Survival Analysis; D001749:Urinary Bladder Neoplasms / Q000401:mortality / Q000532:radiotherapy* / Q000601:surgery*