THE FACTORS AFFECTING RADIOTHERAPY RESPONSE IN PATIENTS WITH BLADDER CANCER

The main aim of this study was to identify favorable prognostic factors for complete response and local control rate of radiotherapy in patients with bladder cancer who completed radiotherapy, in addition to identify prognostic factors for freedom from distant failure and overall survival rate. The factors studied and thought to affect radiotherapy response, local control and distant metastasis free survival and overall survival rates were age, sex, histological grade, clinical stage, transurethral resection, hemoglobin level before treatment, the time between transurethral resection and radiotherapy, total radiation dose and overall treatment time, radiotherapy response, recurrence and develop metastatic disease. The Kaplan-Meier method was used for the determination of survival rates. There were 46 patients with a median follow-up time of 25 months. Complete response was achieved in 78% of patients. In eight patients, a bladder relapse developed. Five-year local control rate was 37.02%. The bladder was preserved in 61% of patients. Metastases developed in 12 patients, and the probability of remaining metastasis free at 5 years was 42.79%. Five-year overall survival rate was 40.97%. Our results showed that the radiotherapy response in bladder cancer patients had a significant influence on the local control and metastasis free survival or overall survival. It was therefore concluded that those patients who had high grade bladder cancer and had complete resection via transurethral resection may be more suitable for the bladder preserving treatment approaches.

Keywords: bladder cancer, radiotherapy, local control