Treatment delay and prognosis in invasive bladder cancer Liedberg F, Anderson H, Månsson W, Department of Urology, Lund University Hospital, Lund, Sweden.
PURPOSE: We studied treatment delay, and the impact on disease specific survival and stage progression in a series of patients who had undergone cystectomy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: All 141 patients underwent radical cystectomy between 1990 and 1997 due to locally advanced bladder cancer. Treatment delay was defined as time from pathological confirmation of invasive disease to performance of cystectomy, and was registered retrospectively from the patient charts. Two patients received neoadjuvant chemotherapy and were excluded from further analyses. Followup continued until April 2003 with death due to bladder cancer as the end point. Causes of death were retrieved from the Swedish Cause of Death Registry. RESULTS: The median treatment delay was 49 days, but was significantly longer for the 71 cases who were referred from other hospitals (63 vs 41 days, p