Introduction: The aim of this article was to investigate the impact of chronic antithrombotic therapy (AT) use on the time of detection of bladder cancer, assuming that patients taking AT experience episodes of macroscopic hematuria earlier, and therefore have a more favorable histopathological grade and stage, as well as a smaller number and size of tumors compared to patients not taking AT.
Material and methods: A retrospective, cross-sectional study was conducted, including 247 patients who underwent bladder cancer surgery for the first time at our institution during the three-year period (2019-2021) and who experienced macroscopic hematuria.
Results: A lower frequency of high-grade bladder cancer (40.6% vs 60.1%, P = 0.006), T2 stage (7.2% vs 20.2%, P = 0.014), and a lower frequency of tumors larger than 3.5 cm (29% vs 57.9%, P <0.001) were found in patients using AT compared to patients not using them. The patients using AT had a smaller mean tumor size (2.98 vs 4.51 cm, P <0.001). A multivariable regression analysis, adjusted for age, sex, and number of comorbidities, showed a lower probability of having a high-grade cancer (OR 0.393, 95% CI 0.195-0.792, P = 0.009), T2 stage (OR 0.276, 95% CI 0.090-0.849, P = 0.025), and tumors larger than 3.5 cm (OR 0.261, 95% CI 0.125-0.542, P <0.001) in patients using AT.
Conclusions: More favorable histopathological grades, stages, and smaller tumor sizes were found in patients with bladder cancer who experienced macroscopic hematuria and were using AT compared to patients not taking AT.
Keywords: antithrombotic therapy; bladder cancer; hematuria.
Copyright by Polish Urological Association.