Department of Urology, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY, USA.
Study Type - Harms (individual cohort) Level of Evidence 2a.
What's known on the subject? and What does the study add? Previously, it was appreciated that men lost about 12 years of expected remaining life if they died of bladder cancer. However, nothing was known about how exposure history, gender, age and stage at diagnosis, and other factors affected life expectancy of bladder cancer patients. The impact of these factors was now taken into consideration when determining years of potential life lost from bladder cancer death and the loss in median life expectancy at bladder cancer diagnosis. Compared with men, women lose more years of life and a greater fraction of their life expectancy to bladder cancer.
To estimate the average loss in life expectancy (LE) due to bladder cancer (BC) in men and women in the USA.
Cancer records for 51 528 patients diagnosed with BC during 1988-1997 were obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database. Potential follow-up ranged from 10 to 20 years (median 14 years). Loss in median LE at BC diagnosis was computed as the difference between expected median survival and observed median survival. Expected survival was calculated using two methods: method 1 used age, sex, and race-specific LE in the general population, method 2 used the hazard of death from non-BC causes in patients with BC (to account for past exposures and treatment-related toxicities not present in the general population).
During the study period, BC death occurred in 17% of men and 23% of women and non-BC death occurred in 53% of men and 47% of women. Using LE in the general population as the reference (method 1), loss in median LE at BC diagnosis was 3.9 years for men (33% of their potential remaining years of life) and 6.5 years for women (47% of their potential remaining years of life). Using non-BC-specific hazard as the reference (method 2), loss in median LE was 2.7 years for men (26% of their potential remaining years of life) and 4.1 years for women (36% of their potential remaining years of life).
Compared with men, women loose more years of life and a greater fraction of their life expectancy to BC.
Written by:
Scosyrev E, Golijanin D, Wu G, Messing E. Are you the author?
Reference: BJU Int. 2011 Aug 23. Epub ahead of print.
doi: 10.1111/j.1464-410X.2011.10318.x
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 21883817
UroToday.com Bladder Cancer Section
