Delayed Cystoscopic Follow-up of Non-muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer during the COVID-19 Pandemic may Increase Recurrence Rates but not Progression Rates

Objektive: The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a difference in terms of recurrence and progression rate before and after the pandemic in patients who applied for bladder cancer and / or were followed-up-treatment-operated in the urology clinic during the pandemic. Method: A total of 116 NMIBC patients with delayed cystoscopy and 90 control patients with timely cystoscopy were included in the study between June and July 2020. Demographic data of the patients were recorded. Recurrences and progression scores were calculated and grouped according to these scores. Cystoscopy delay time was calculated as the time from the planned cystoscopy time to the performed cystoscopy time. Recurrence and progression status of the patients were recorded and a comparison was made between the two groups. Results: The median age was 63.6 years (interquartile range [IQR] 35–85) in delayed cystoscopy group and 67.3 (25-87) in control group. In the delayed cystoscopy group, 29 (25%) patients had tumor recurrence on follow-up cystoscopy and 3 (10.34%) patients had tumor progression on subsequent TUR-BT. The mean cystoscopy delay time is 89.27±27.35 days. As a result of the chi-square analysis performed in the group with 10-17 recurrence points, a statistically significant relationship was found between the experimental and control groups (χ2=5.792; p=.016; p0.05). Conclusion: In this study, we reported that superficial bladder cancers with low recurrence score can wait 3-6 months but delaying 3-6 months in cases with a recurrence score of 10 or more increases the recurrence rate.