[Radical cystectomy for the treatment of infiltrating bladder carcinoma. Analysis of 15 years].

Radical cystectomy continues to be the procedure of choice in the treatment of invasive bladder cancer and it is currently an exceptional procedure as monotherapy. The development of surgical techniques for urinary diversion, with less complications, has led to a significant improvement of the overall results achieved with this procedure. We performed a retrospective study of 143 cystectomy procedures that had been performed over a period of 15 years in patients with this tumor type. We evaluated the operative mortality, the morbidity resulting from the procedure, and patient nutritional status and its relation to the appearance of complications. Similarly, we analyzed the different therapeutic strategies we utilized throughout the course of our urological evolution, clearly differentiated into three periods during which we associated radical cystectomy with radiotherapy pre- and post-surgery, neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy (monotherapy with CDDP or multiple therapy with M-VAC). The operative mortality rate was 0.94% and the incidence of early complications varied according to the different periods, 62% and 32%. Late complications were observed to be 24%. The overall 5-year survival rate was 39% for cystectomy + radiotherapy, 59% when we utilized cisplatin as adjuvant therapy, and 70% (2 years) when we utilized M-VAC neoadjuvant chemotherapy. We believe that distant metastasis was the most common cause of late failures of total cystectomy for infiltrating bladder tumor. Similarly, we believe that the reduced incidence of early complications reported in recent years can be ascribed to the enhanced surgical techniques, better nutritional status of the patient undergoing this procedure, antibiotic therapy, perioperative care, and overall better management and understanding of this disease entity; i. e., the use of a combined therapeutic approach.