Clinical Outcomes of Three or More Courses of First-line Chemotherapy for Metastatic Urothelial Carcinoma.

BACKGROUND/AIM: The current standard of care for first-line treatment of locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma (UC) is platinum-based combination chemotherapy. Recently, immune checkpoint inhibitors have been reported to be effective for UC. Knowing whether immunotherapy or chemotherapy is suitable as first-line treatment is beneficial for patients. A retrospective study was conducted on the clinical outcomes of Japanese patients who received three or more courses of first-line chemotherapy for metastatic UC to assess the outcome of conventional treatments in real clinical situation.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Patients who received first-line chemotherapy between August 2009 and December 2019 were included. Progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were assessed.

RESULTS

The median PFS and OS were 7.1 and 27.1 months, respectively, for patients with no disease progression at the end of three courses. Of 28 patients, 25 (89.3%) received second-line drug therapy and 10 (35.7%) received focal therapy for disease control. Patients with focal therapy had significantly longer OS than those without focal therapy (p=0.019, log-rank test).

CONCLUSION

OS of metastatic UC at our Institution is relatively long, suggesting that aggressive second-line drug therapy and focal therapy may have contributed to such result.