Efficacy of Bladder Intravesical Chemotherapy with Three Drugs for Preventing Non-Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer Recurrence

Epirubicin, gemcitabine, and pirarubicin are widely used as first-line drugs for intravesical chemotherapy to prevent tumor recurrence after transurethral bladder tumor resection for non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). However, which drug is better is less discussed. A total of 335 NMIBC patients administered intravesical chemotherapy underwent transurethral bladder tumor resection (TURBT) in our hospital from October 2015 to October 2019. After TURBT, all the patients received standard intravesical chemotherapy. Through clinical data collection and telephone follow-up, the tumor recurrence and adverse reactions of all patients after bladder perfusion treatment were counted. Recurrence was defined as new tumor appearance in the bladder. Of the 335 patients who underwent intravesical chemotherapy, 109 patients received epirubicin and 114 patients and 112 patients were given gemcitabine and pirarubicin, respectively. According to the general information of the patients, the patients were divided into intermediate-risk and high-risk bladder cancer and compared separately. There was no statistical difference in clinical and pathological features between different groups (P > 0.05). The recurrence rate of intermediate-risk bladder cancer patients shows no difference between three groups (P > 0.05). As for the high-risk bladder cancer patients, it is found that the 1-year recurrence rate between three groups was not statistically significant (P > 0.05), whereas the 2-year recurrence rate of patients given gemcitabine (9.87%) was significantly lower than that of epirubicin (25.37%) and pirarubicin (24.32%), and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.017, Bonferroni adjusted P value). The Kaplan–Meier survival curves showed that the recurrence-free survival rate of patients received gemcitabine was significantly higher than that of the other two groups. Comparing the incidence of adverse reactions during the infusion of the three groups of patients, the differences were not statistically significant (P > 0.05). In patients with high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer, the application of gemcitabine intravesical chemotherapy is related with a relatively lower recurrence rate but similar incidence of adverse reactions.