The prognostic value of preoperative serum albumin in patients with bladder urothelial carcinoma undergoing transurethral resection of bladder tumor: A prospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: To evaluate whether the preoperative serum albumin level can predict the survival outcome in patients with bladder urothelial carcinoma (BUC) undergoing transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT). METHODS: Four hundred fifty six newly diagnosed patients with BUC who underwent TURBT between January 2014 and December 2017 were retrospectively enrolled. Patients were categorized into low albumin (<40 g/L) and high albumin (≥40 g/L) groups. Survival was estimated using the Kaplan–Meier method and compared using the log-rank test. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional analyses were used to determine the hazard ratios (HRs) for overall survival (OS). Of patients with available data, 108 (24%) and 348 (76%) patients were classified into the low albumin (<40 g/L) and high albumin (≥40 g/L) groups, respectively. RESULTS: The results of the Kaplan–Meier analysis and log-rank test showed a significantly worse 5-year OS (P = .003) in the low albumin group than in the high albumin group. In the multivariate Cox regression analysis, after adjusting for confounding variables, the preoperative albumin level remained an independent predictor for 5-year OS (HR: 0.434, 95% confidence interval: 0.221–0.852; P = .015). CONCLUSION: Our study determined that a low preoperative albumin level predicted poor OS in patients with BUC who underwent TURBT. Preoperative serum albumin is an inexpensive and easily available marker that has the potential to be a good prognostic factor for predicting mortality in patients with BUC treated with TURBT.