[Clinical significance of pelvic lymph-node dissection for the patients with locally invasive bladder cancer--correlation between the number of retrieved lymph nodes and prognosis].

The objective of this study was to know the effects of pelvic lymph node dissection on the survival of the patients who received radical cystectomy without neoadjuvant chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Between 1984 and 2000, 104 patients underwent operation at our institution for tumors clinically diagnosed as locally invasive bladder cancer (T2-4NxM0). Survival rates and 8 prognostic factors (age, sex, size, multiplicity, type, pT, N, pv) were analyzed by uni- and multivariate analysis. The significant factors were size, type, pT, N, pv by univariate analysis. Of these 5 factors, N factor was the most significant by multivariate analysis. Patients (N-) who had more than 20 lymph nodes retrieved showed better survival than the others.