Clinical benefit to regionalization of care for muscle invasive bladder cancer

In a recent issue of the Journal of Urology, Ryan et al. (1) report the outcomes of a retrospective cohort study using the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) that sought to characterize the relationship between distance traveled for treatment and overall mortality for patients with muscle invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). Inclusion criteria included cT2-cT4aN0M0 disease, palliative care not used as the primary goal of treatment, and distance from treatment facility ≤250 miles. A total of 34,729 patients with MIBC were analyzed, with a subset analysis performed on 11,059 patients undergoing radical cystectomy (RC).