Five-year results of neoadjuvant cisplatin, methotrexate and vinblastine chemotherapy plus radical cystectomy in locally advanced bladder cancer

Neoadjuvant systemic cisplatin, methotrexate and vinblastine chemotherapy has been used in the treatment of 69 patients with advanced bladder cancer (stages T2-T4 N+/N0 M0). Sixty patients were evaluable for response at a median follow-up of 48 months. Preoperative resection of the tumor was purposely avoided in order to keep a marker lesion. After planned radical cystectomy, pathological complete responses (pCRs) and partial responses (pPRs) were documented in 5 (8.3%) and 29 cases (43.4%), respectively. These patients had a 5-year disease-free survival rate of 80%, which was statistically superior (p = 0.0013) to 35% for the remaining nonresponding patients. One patient (20%) with a pCR died of systemic disease after 14 months, while the remaining 4 patients (80%) are alive and free of disease after a median follow-up of 57 months. A higher percentage of pCRs and pPRs was observed in the group of patients with stage T3b-T4 tumor (pCR 11%, pPR 63%) in contrast to the patients with stage T2-T3a disease (pCR 4.5%, pPR 45.5%), even if no significant difference in the 5-year survival rate was observed between the 2 groups. Patients with a G2 tumor before chemotherapy survived longer (5-year survival rate of 78%) than those with G3 disease (5-year survival rate of 61%), but no significant difference was achieved