[Effect of prophylactic intravesical instillation of BCG for superficial bladder cancer]

Between January 1997 and February 2005, a total of 106 patients with superficial bladder cancer were treated with transurethral resection of bladder tumor followed by intravesical instillation of Tokyo 172 strain bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) once a week for six weeks. The endpoints were tumor recurrence, tumor progression, and disease-specific survival. At a median follow-up of 27 months (range 2 to 105 months), 67 patients (63.2%) were recurrence-free and superficial recurrence including disease progressed with local invasion was noted in 39 patients (36.8%). The non-recurrence rate at one and three years were 75.9 and 54.6%. Twenty-four patients received an additional course of BCG instillation, and 14 (58.3%) showed no further recurrence. Thus, the overall success rate of 2 courses of BCG instillation was 76.4% (81 of 106 patients). Nine patients (8.5%) had progression and died of cancer. There was no significant differernce in recurrence rate among tumor characteristics. However, there was a significant differernce in survival rate between non-invasive and invasive tumor shape (p = 0.0189). Univariate analysis (Cox's proportional hazard model) demonstrated that tumor shape was associated with survival (p = 0.0486). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that gender and tumor shape were associated with survival (p = 0.0183, 0.025). Adverse effects included bladder irritability in 16 patients (15.1%), gross hematuria in 15 (14.2%), fever in 24 (22.6%), contracted bladder in 1 (0.9%) and interstitial pneumonitis in 1 (0.9%). Interstitial pneumonitis improved after pulse steroid therapy. BCG was found to be very useful for the treatment of superficial bladder cancer. Intravesical BCG instillation was effective for first recurrent superficial bladder cancer because of the low recurrence rate after a second instillation of BCG.