Evaluating the impact of 18F-FDG-PET-CT on risk stratification and treatment adaptation for patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (EFFORT-MIBC): a phase II prospective trial

BACKGROUND: The outcome of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) remains poor, despite aggressive treatments. Inadequate primary staging, classically performed by computed tomography (CT)-imaging, could lead to inappropriate treatment and might contribute to these poor results. Although not (yet) adapted by international guidelines, several reports have indicated the superiority of (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography-CT ((18)F-FDG-PET-CT) compared to CT in the detection of lymph node and distant metastases. Thereby the presence of extra-vesical disease on (18)F-FDG-PET-CT has been correlated with a worse overall survival. This supports the hypothesis that (18)F-FDG-PET-CT is useful in stratifying MIBC patients and that adapting the treatment plan accordingly might result in improved outcome. METHODS: EFFORT-MIBC is a multicentric prospective phase II trial aiming to include 156 patients. Eligible patients are patients with histopathology-proven MIBC or ≥ T3 on conventional imaging treated with MIBC radical treatment, without extra-pelvic metastases on conventional imaging (thoracic CT and abdominopelvic CT/ magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)). All patients will undergo radical local therapy and if eligible neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. An (18)F-FDG-PET-CT will be performed in addition to and at the timing of the conventional imaging. In case of presence of extra-pelvic metastasis on (18)F-FDG-PET-CT, appropriate intensification of treatment with metastasis-directed therapy (MDT) (in case of ≤3 metastases) or systemic immunotherapy (> 3 metastases) will be provided. The primary outcome is the 2-year overall survival rate. Secondary endpoints are progression-free survival, distant metastasis-free survival, disease-specific survival and quality of life. Furthermore, the added diagnostic value of (18)F-FDG-PET-CT compared to conventional imaging will be evaluated and biomarkers in tumor specimen, urine and blood will be correlated with primary and secondary endpoints. DISCUSSION: This is a prospective phase II trial evaluating the impact of (18)F-FDG-PET-CT in stratifying patients with primary MIBC and tailoring the treatment accordingly. We hypothesize that the information on the pelvic nodes can be used to guide local treatment and that the presence of extra-pelvic metastases enables MDT or necessitates the early initiation of immunotherapy leading to an improved outcome. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The Ethics Committee of the Ghent University Hospital (BC-07456) approved this study on 11/5/2020. The trial was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04724928) on 21/1/2021. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-021-08861-x.