Adjuvant chemotherapy for bladder cancer—why does level 1 evidence not support it?

Abstract

Neoadjuvant cisplatin-based combination chemotherapy provides a 5% increase in cure rate, an increase in median survival of about 3 years, and statistically significant and clinically relevant increments in overall survival for patients with invasive bladder cancer. Despite compelling level 1 data, it has become quite clear that facts that are similar to those that changed the paradigm of treatment of breast cancer in the 1970s have not had a similar influence on patterns of practice in bladder cancer care. Instead of using this proven approach, cystectomy alone or surgery followed by adjuvant chemotherapy is often used as a functional alternative for patients with deeply invasive and/or node-metastatic disease discovered at radical cystectomy. However, there is no well-powered level 1 evidence to support routine adjuvant chemotherapy for invasive bladder cancer, and some randomized trials have shown inferior outcomes. There is a clear need for a well-designed, randomized trial that tests the utility of adjuvant chemotherapy for invasive bladder cancer, but until that has been completed, neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by definitive local treatment should be the standard of care for invasive bladder cancer.