Delayed Cystoscopic Follow-up of Non-muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer during the COVID-19 Pandemic may Increase Recurrence Rates but not Progression Rates

Abstract

Background: This study aimed to investigate whether there is a difference in recurrence and progression rate before and after the pandemic in patients who applied for bladder cancer and/or were followed-up-treatment-operated in the urology clinic during the pandemic. Material and Methods: A total of 116 non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) patients with delayed cystoscopy and 90 control patients with timely cystoscopy were included in the study between June and July 2020. Demographic data of the patients were recorded. Recurrences and progression scores were calculated and grouped according to these scores. The cystoscopy delay time was calculated from the planned cystoscopy time to the performed cystoscopy time. The recurrence and progression status of the patients were recorded, and a comparison was made between the two groups. Results: The median age was 63.6 years (interquartile range [IQR] 35–85) in the delayed cystoscopy group and 67.3 (25-87) in the control group. In the delayed cystoscopy group, 29 (25%) patients had tumour recurrence on follow-up cystoscopy, and 3 (10.34%) patients had tumour progression on subsequent TUR-BT. The mean cystoscopy delay time is 89.27±27.35 days. As a result of the chi-square analysis performed on the group with 10-17 recurrence points found a statistically significant relationship between the experimental and control groups (χ2=5.792; p=.016; p0.05). Conclusions: In this study, we reported that superficial bladder cancers with low recurrence scores could wait 3-6 months, but delaying 3-6 months in cases with a recurrence score of 10 or more increases the recurrence rate.