The Role of Surgery in Local Recurrences after Radical Cystectomy for Bladder Cancer.

Introduction: Local recurrence (LR) after radical cystectomy (RC) for bladder cancer has a bad prognosis. Treatment options include chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgical excision, but few data is available on the advantages of surgery for these patients.

Patients And Methods: We evaluated our series of 8 selected patients who underwent surgery for locally recurrent bladder cancer after RC.

Results: The median time to recurrence after cystectomy was 20.8 months. The complications rate and severity were not negligible. Pathology report confirmed urothelial carcinoma with negative margins in all patients. After LR treatment, 4 patients recurred locally for a second time and 3 developed distant metastasis. They all died after a median follow-up of 10.4 months. One patient remained disease free after 14 months.

Conclusions: The prognosis of patients with LR is poor regardless of surgical treatment and reflects the aggressive biological nature of urothelial tumors.