Abstract
BACKGROUND: In a retrospective study of Southwestern Oncology Group (SWOG)-S8710/INT-0080 (radical cystectomy [RC] alone vs 3 cycles of neoadjuvant chemotherapy [NC] with methotrexate, vinblastine, doxorubicin, and cisplatin before RC for bladder cancer), factors found to be associated with improved overall survival (OS) included pathologic complete response, defined as P0; treatment with NC; completion of RC with negative surgical margins; and >or=10 pelvic lymph nodes (LNs) removed. METHODS: The authors used stratified Cox regression to retrospectively study the association of quality of pathologic response after RC with OS in the subset of S8710 patients who received NC and RC with negative surgical margins. RESULTS: Of 154 patients who received NC, 68 (44.2%) were