Investigation was made on 52 patients who underwent radical cystectomy for bladder cancer in order to estimate the significance of histological findings, to predict the probability of pelvic lymph node metastasis and to establish the survival rates. The following results were obtained:
1) Of 52 patients, nine (17%) had positive pelvic lymph node metastasis.
2) As regards the pathological stages, 17 patients with pTis-pT1 tumors had no pelvic lymph node metastasis. Positive lymph node metastasis appeared in 1 of 11 patients with pT2 tumors (9%), in 1 of 7 with pT3a (14%), in 1 of 8 with pT3b (13%) and in 6 of 8 with pT4 (75%). This suggests that the incidence of lymph node metastasis increases when the muscle layer has been invaded and that it further increases dramatically when neighboring organs are involved.
3) Of 46 patients with transitional cell carcinoma, positive lymph node metastasis appeared in 1 of 14 patients with grade 2 tumors (7%) and in 7 of 32 with grade 3 (22%).
4) As to the pattern of growth, patients with non-papillary tumors tended to have a higher incidence of nodal metastasis than those with papillary tumors. As regards mural lymphatic invasion, patients with ly
2 had the highest incidence of lymph node metastasis, followed by those with ly
1 and ly
0. As to the infiltration pattern, patients with INFγ had the highest incidence of nodal metastasis, followed by those with INFβ and INFα. These findings suggest that the growth pattern, infiltration pattern and lymphatic invasion have some correlation to pelvic lymph node metastasis.
5) The degree of peritumoral infiltration of lymphocytes had no apparent correlation to stage, grade, growth pattern, infiltration pattern, mural lymphatic invasion or lymph node metastasis.
6) In patients who had metastasis in just one or two lymph nodes, the hypogastric and/or obturator lymph nodes were most commonly involved. In patients with more than two positive nodes, the common iliac lymph nodes and/or external iliac lymph nodes were also involved. Positive lymph nodes tended to locate ipsilaterally to the primary tumors of the bladder. These findings suggest that lymph node dissection should be meticulously made in the ipsilateral hypogastric and obturator regions.
7) The one, three and five-year survival rates for the 52 patients were 82.1%, 62.0% and 62.0%, respectively.
8) The 3-year survival rates by grade of transitional cell carcinoma were 84.6% for patients with grade 2, and 51.4% for those with grade 3. The 3-year survival rates by histological stages were 100% for pTis-pT1, 64.6% for pT2, 68.6% for pT3a, 23.8% for pT3b and 0% for pT4. The results for pT2 and pT3a suggest that the depth of muscle invasion does not affect the survival rate of patients who undergo radical cystectomy.
9) The 3-year survival rates for patients with and without node metastasis were 22.2% and 69.9%, respectively. A significant difference was found between their survival curves (p<0.01).
10) Pelvic lymph node dissection has two important functions: to improve the chances of completely eradicating the cancer, and to provide accurate information on the extension of the disease in order to determine the most appropriate post-operative adjuvant therapy.
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