MONDAY, Oct. 27, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- For patients with bladder cancer, the omission of muscle in the specimen or its mention in the pathology report is associated with increased mortality, according to a study published online Oct. 22 in Cancer.
Karim Chamie, M.D., M.S.H.S., from the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues reviewed the clinical records of 1,865 individuals within the Los Angeles Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Registry with nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer. They examined the correlation of patient and tumor characteristics with the quality of staging and cancer-specific survival.
The researchers found that muscle was reported as present, reported as absent, and not mentioned in 52.1, 30.2, and 17.7 percent of initial pathology reports, respectively. Neither grade nor depth of invasion affected the presence of muscle. There was a significant correlation for mortality with staging quality. When muscle was present, absent, or not mentioned, five-year cancer-specific mortality was 8, 13, and 21.5 percent, respectively, among patients with high-grade disease.
"The omission of muscle in the specimen or its mention in the pathology report in nearly half of all diagnostic resections is associated with increased mortality, particularly in patients with high-grade disease," the authors write. "We contend that patients with bladder cancer should undergo adequate muscle sampling at the time of endoscopic resection."
Abstract
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