Abstract
The authors evaluated the impact of early second transurethral resection of bladder tumour (re-TURB) on survival outcomes for patients with T1 bladder cancer (BC). They designed a population-based retrospective observational cohort study based on pathology reports linked to data from health administrators.
The cohort comprised 7666 adult patients diagnosed with incidental T1 BC between 2001 and 2015 in Ontario. Re-TURB was performed in 2162 of the patients (28.2%) within 2-10 wk after the initial TURB.
Patients who underwent re-TURB were younger, had more aggressive tumours and fewer comorbidities, and were operated on by younger surgeons with an academic affiliation. In unadjusted analysis, patients in the re-TURB group were less likely to die from either BC or other causes.
After adjusting for confounding variables, re-TURB was significantly associated with lower overall mortality, but not with cancer-specific survival (marginal significance). Adjusted analyses demonstrated that the benefit of re-TURB was more pronounced in the subgroup of patients with insufficiently sampled muscularis propria.