Survival Impact of Current-Smoking-Related COPD or COPD with Acute Exacerbation on Bladder Preservation through Concurrent Chemoradiotherapy for Muscle-Invasive Bladder Urothelial Carcinoma.

The survival effect of smoking-related chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and COPD with acute exacerbation (COPDAE) on patients with muscle-invasive bladder urothelial carcinoma (MIBUC) receiving concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) for bladder preservation is unclear. We recruited patients with MIBUC, clinical stages IIA-IVB, who had received maximal transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT) followed by CCRT from the Taiwan Cancer Registry Database. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to analyze all-cause mortality. We categorized the patients into two groups by using propensity score matching based on the preexisting COPD status (within 1 year before CCRT) to compare overall survival outcomes: Group 1 (never smokers without COPD) and Group 2 (current smokers with COPD). In multivariate Cox regression analyses, the adjusted hazard ratio (aHR; 95% confidence interval (CI)) of all-cause mortality in Group 2 compared with Group 1 was 1.89 (1.12-3.18), = 0.017. The aHRs (95% CIs) of all-cause mortality for ≥1 and ≥2 hospitalizations for COPDAE within 1 year before CCRT for bladder preservation were 3.26 (1.95-5.46) and 6.33 (3.55-11.281) compared with non-COPDAE patients with MIBUC undergoing CCRT for bladder preservation. Among patients with MIBUC undergoing TURBT followed by CCRT for bladder preservation, current smokers with smoking-related COPD had worse survival outcomes than did nonsmokers without COPD. This was the first study to estimate the survival impact of smoking-related chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) on patients with muscle-invasive bladder urothelial carcinoma (MIBUC) receiving maximal transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT) followed by concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) for bladder preservation. Smoking-related COPD was a significant independent risk factor for all-cause mortality in patients with clinical stages IIA-IVB receiving TURBT followed by CCRT. Hospitalization frequency for COPD with at least one acute exacerbation within 1 year before CCRT was highly associated with high mortality for patients with MIBUC receiving CCRT for bladder preservation. Not only all-cause death but also bladder cancer death and COPD death were significantly higher in the current-smoking COPD group than in the never-smoking non-COPD group.