Pathology outcomes in patients with transurethral bladder tumour resection in a Turkish population: A retrospective analysis

Objectives: Transurethral bladder tumour resection (TURBT) is the common surgical method used in the diagnosis, staging and treatment of patients with bladder tumour. Most of the rare tumours other than the urothelial carcinomas of the bladder are in advanced stage on diagnosis and necessitate aggressive treatment. In our study, we aimed to the histologic types of bladder cancer and to determine the regional incidence of rare bladder cancer types in our region.
Materials and methods: We retrospectively evaluated 815 patients who underwent TURBT surgery between January 2010 and March 2016 in our clinic with a diagnosis of bladder cancer and at least 1 year follow-up. Patients with tumour histopathological examination including histological tumour type, grade and were reported. Thirty-nine patients with an unclear pathology report (neighboring organ invasion, cautery artifact, etc) and 17 patients whose data could not be accessed were excluded from the study. The patients who had received chemotherapy or radiotherapy due to any type of malignancy (23) were also excluded from the study.
Results: The outcomes of 736 patients operated in our clinics due to bladder tumour were evaluated. The mean age was 65.2 ± 8.4; 135 were female and 601 were male. Among them 711 patients with urothelial carcinoma were reported (94.2%). According to TNM classification, stage Ta was observed in 270 patients (37.9%), stage T1 in 297 (41.7%), and stage T2 in 144 (20.3%). Non-urothelial cancers were reported in 25 cases (3.3%).
Conclusion: The incidence of bladder carcinoma varies between regions. The results of our study are similar to those of the western countries. Increased smoking and exposure to environmental carcinogenetic agents may lead to altered incidences and histological types of bladder tumours. Revision of regional tumour records may be useful to develop and evaluate future treatment strategies.