Nordic Cystectomy Study I - Prospective Validation of Neutrophil/Lymphocyte Ratio as Predictor of Bladder Cancer Survival Risk After Radical Cystectomy for Bladder Cancer

Around 7200 cases of Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer are diagnosed annually in the Nordic countries combined. Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer is an aggressive disease and it is linked with high mortality rates. The golden standard of treatment is radical cystectomy (RC) (the surgical removal of the bladder) and radical removal of lymph nodes in the pelvis. In addition to surgical treatment, and especially in cases where the tumour invades tissues surrounding the bladder or lymph nodes, chemotherapy is recommended. Chemotherapy can be administered before or after surgery, in a neoadjuvant (NAC) or adjuvant setting (AC). Although most patients recover well from surgery, there are significant risks regarding radical cystectomy. The greatest challenges in planning the treatment are making individual risk assessments and prognosis for the treated patients. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is also insufficiently used and it is hard to predict how the tumour responds to chemotherapy.

The purpose of this study is to collect prospective clinical data on radical cystectomy -patients in co-operation with other Nordic countries: Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Norway. The collected data is used to validate existing prediction tools and discover novel tools for prediction of morbidity related to RC and prediction of oncological outcome after RC. The study is divided into three sub-studies. The second sub-study is on the preoperative neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR). Some studies suggest that NLR might be a predictor of oncological outcome of BC after RC. In addition, NLR has been suggested to correlate with NAC response and outcome after NAC and RC. The used cut-off value for NLR has varied between 2.26-3.0.

Patients will be allocated into two groups: low NLR ratio (NLR<3), and high NLR ratio (NLR≥3). The lab test will be retrieved before RC at the time of routine clinical laboratory testing for all patients and also before the initiation of NAC for patients planned to have chemotherapy. The primary end-point is bladder-cancer specific survival and, and secondary endpoints include progression-free, and overall survival.