Prognostic Factors of Trimodal Therapy for Muscle-invasive Bladder Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Trimodal therapy (TMT)-comprising transurethral resection of the bladder tumor, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy-offers a bladder-preserving alternative to radical cystectomy for selected patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). However, the optimal criteria for patient selection and prognostication remain inadequately defined. A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to optimize the selection of MIBC patients who are likely to have better survival outcomes from TMT. METHODS: A systematic literature search was conducted in MEDLINE, Embase, and Web of Science in February 2025. Eligible studies examined prognostic factors for overall or cancer-specific survival in patients with MIBC undergoing TMT. To reduce the impact of confounding, only multivariable-adjusted estimates were included in the meta-analysis. Pooled hazard ratios (HRs) were calculated using a random-effect model. The risk of bias was evaluated using the Quality In Prognosis Studies (QUIPS) tool (CRD42025641514). KEY FINDINGS AND LIMITATIONS: A total of 31 studies, including 9416 patients treated with TMT for MIBC, met the inclusion criteria. Older age (per year increase; HR: 1.03, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.01-1.05), poor performance status (Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group ≥2 vs 0-1; HR: 2.47, 95% CI: 1.78-3.43), impaired renal function (HR: 1.47, 95% CI: 1.12-1.92), presence of hydronephrosis (HR: 1.65, 95% CI: 1.17-2.34), advanced T stage (HR: 1.47, 95% CI: 1.23-1.77), nodal involvement (HR: 1.90, 95% CI: 1.10-3.30), and concomitant carcinoma in situ (HR: 1.81, 95% CI: 1.02-3.20) were independently associated with worse overall survival. Limitations included heterogeneity in treatment protocols and potential residual confounding across studies. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Specific patient- and tumor-related factors are significantly associated with prognosis in patients undergoing TMT for MIBC. These findings may aid in refining patient selection and risk stratification for TMT-based bladder-preserving approaches.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.011 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".