The importance of clinical and pathological features in bladder cancer and its effects on disease course

Objective: Bladder cancer (BC) is the most common malignancy of the urinary system and the incidence of BC varies regionally. Bladder cancer is more common in men than in women. Tumor stage and grade are the most important prognostic factors of BC. We aimed to describe the patterns of BC presentation and to examine the differences in the distribution of prognostic factors by gender, age, tumor size, and involvement region. Method: The patients diagnosed with BC (non-muscle invasive or muscle-invasive BC) were included. Intravesical treatment, tumor diameter, pathological grade, tumor involved area and tumor stage were recorded as variables. The survival rates of the patients were calculated for diverse clinical and pathological findings. Results:In a total of 124 patients, 23 (18.5%) of patients were female and 101(81.5%) of patients were male, the median age of all patients was 64 (IQR: 21-92). There were 36 % (41) patients in early-stage (stage 0 or stage insitu), 50.9 % (58) patients in stage 1, 7% (8) patients in stage 2, 4.4 %(5) patients in stage 3 and 1.8% (2) patients were in stage 4. There were significantly different OS rates of patients with BC in different stages (p<0.001). Tumor diameter in 36 of patients was < 2.5cm (group 1) and tumor diameter in 28 patients was>2.5cm (group 2). There was a significant difference between the overall survival rates of group 1 and group 2(p=0.02). There were 55 patients with low-grade BC and 38 of patients with high-grade BC, and the difference between their survival rates was statistically significant (p=0.001). Conclusions: Tumor stage, tumor diameter, and grade were demonstrated and confirmed as the crucial prognostic factors of bladder cancer. Additionally, lateral walls of bladder constitute the most commonly involved area, but their roles in the disease course still remain unclear.