Narayan VM, et al. – Researchers aimed to distinguish trends in utilization of urinary markers and long–term outcomes of urinary tumor marker use in patients with bladder cancer. The outcomes of this study highlighted that increased use of urinary marker testing (UMT) was documented over all stages and grades of bladder cancer, and in certain patient/provider variables. This increase may have contributed to improved overall and cancer specific survival. Additional investigation is necessary to further characterize this benefit.

Methods

• Researchers applied data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results–Medicare (SEER–Medicare) database from 2001 to 2011 to distinguish a cohort of 64,450 patients with bladder cancer who underwent urinary marker testing (UMT) with UroVysion FISH, NMP22, or the BTA Stat tests.
• They assessed that frequency of UMT and urine cytology.
• Thereafter, characteristics of patients who did and did not undergo UMT were examined applying chi–square.
• They examined predictors of UMT applying a multivariable logistic regression model, and applied cox proportional hazards to determine unadjusted cancer–specific and overall mortality risks.

Results

• The data suggested that UMT increased from 17.8% to a peak of 28.2% during the years studied (p<0.0001).
• Thereafter, predictors of marker use included female gender, younger age, and lower Charlson score.
• The data suggested that overall and cancer specific survival improved on Kaplan–Meier and Cox proportional hazards analyses with urinary marker testing.