EORTC risk tables for recurrence and progression in Ta and T1 bladder cancer
Pooling seven trials, this analysis produced the scoring tables that clinicians still use to estimate how likely a non-muscle-invasive bladder tumour is to come back or to progress into the muscle.
Overview
Analysis of 2,596 patients with Ta or T1 bladder cancer from seven EORTC trials, mostly treated with transurethral resection and intravesical chemotherapy, to identify factors predicting recurrence and progression.
Number of tumours, size, prior recurrence rate, T category, carcinoma in situ and grade were combined into scores giving one- and five-year probabilities of recurrence and progression. The tables underpin the low, intermediate and high-risk groups used in guidelines.
- Five-year progression risk ranged from under 1 percent in the lowest score group to 45 percent in the highest.
- Five-year recurrence risk ranged from 31 percent to 78 percent.
The risk groups that decide whether a patient gets a single chemotherapy instillation, BCG, or early cystectomy trace back to this work. Later models (CUETO, the 2021 EAU risk groups) refine the estimates for BCG-treated patients.
- Few patients received BCG maintenance or re-resection, so the tables overestimate risk under modern care.
- Grading used the 1973 WHO system.