Assessment of 5-year overall survival in bladder cancer patients with incidental prostate cancer identified at radical cystoprostatectomy

Objective To investigate the oncological impact of incidental prostate cancer (iPCa) found during radical cystoprostatectomy (RCP) on overall survival (OS) prognosis of urothelial carcinoma of the bladder (BCa). Patients and methods A total of 122 RCP cases resected between 2002 and 2012 at our center were included for study. Survival of BCa patient was compared using the Kaplan-Meier method and the log-rank test. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to analyze the impact of iPCa on the 5-year overall mortality of BCa patients after RCP. Results Among the 122 BCa cases that underwent RCP, 38 cases (31.1%) had iPCa, in which, 17 cases (44.7%) were identified as clinically significant iPCa (csPCa). BCa patients with iPCa were older (71 vs 64 years, p = 0.004) and had higher preoperative PSA level (3.1 ng/mL vs 1.4 ng/mL, p = 0.017) when compared to those without iPCa. Cases with iPCa showed a more favorable 5-year OS than cases without iPCa, although this difference did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.219). When excluding the higher risk cases with Gleason score (GS) >= 4 + 3 and/or preoperative PSA > 10 ng/mL, BCa patients with iPCa showed a significantly longer OS than cases without iPCa on univariate analysis (p = 0.044), but not on multivariate analysis (p = 0.125). Conclusion Our results demonstrated that the frequent findings of low-risk iPCa in BCa patients could indicate the potential possibility of shared pathogenesis pathways between iPCa and BCa. Future study with a larger cohort is warranted to validate this result.