Effects of delayed diagnosis on tumor size, stage and grade in bladder cancer

This study is planned based on the hypothesis that if bladder cancer is detected early, the disease would be less advanced and the possibility of treatment will increase, at least the recurrence-free survival will be longer. Regarding this hypothesis, it is aimed to investigate the effect of delayed diagnosis primarily on the disease factors.

The study included 169 patients, who underwent TUR-BT with the suspicion of bladder cancer in the urology clinic of Afyonkarahisar Faculty of Medicine between April 2018 and April 2023. Demographic and clinical data of the patients were recorded and compared.

It was observed that the delay in diagnosis was significantly longer in patients with tumors larger than 3 cm compared to patients with tumors smaller than 3 cm (p < 0.001). In the correlation analysis between tumor size, duration of diagnosis delay, age, T stage, and tumor grade, a low level of positive correlation was observed between tumor size and duration of diagnosis delay, and it was statistically significant (r = 0.215, p = 0.005).

In our study, it was shown that the tumor size increases as the duration of diagnosis delay increases and this increase causes an increase of 0.088 mm in the pathological size of the tumor in the 1-day delay period. Considering that tumor size changes the risk group of the disease in bladder tumors, and relatedly the follow-up and treatment process changes, we believe that these data will be valuable in the management of bladder cancer.