Background: The control of schistosomiasis in Egypt was associated with changes in the prevalence and histopathology of urinary bladder cancer.
Aim: To investigate the histological pattern among patients treated for bladder cancer at our institution over a 5-year period.
Methods: This retrospective study was conducted by reviewing the medical records of 632 patients treated for urinary bladder cancer at the departments of Urology and Clinical Oncology, Al Azhar Faculty of Medicine, between January 2011 and December 2015.
Results: The study included 632 patients. Their age ranged from 27-87 years old with a median of 62 years. Male to female ratio was about 6:1. Fifty-nine percent of the patients had Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer (NMIBC) versus 41% had Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer (MIBC). Patients with history of schistosomiasis were 46.5%; besides, 67.9% of the patients were smokers. Transitional Cell Carcinoma (TCC) was the predominant histological type (87.5%), followed by Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC) 9.1%, mixed SCC and TCC (2.8%), and other subtypes 0.6%.
Conclusion: Our study confirms that the histopathological pattern of urinary bladder cancer in Egypt is still changing. Over the last decades, the incidence of bladder SCC is declining and bladder TCC is rising. Yet the incidence of bladder SCC is the lowest compared to previous reports.