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Pooling seven trials, this analysis produced the scoring tables that clinicians still use to estimate how likely a non-muscle-invasive bladder tumour is to come back or to progress into the muscle.
Analysis of 2,596 patients with Ta or T1 bladder cancer from seven EORTC trials, mostly treated with transurethral resection and intravesical chemotherapy, to identify factors predicting recurrence and progression.
Number of tumours, size, prior recurrence rate, T category, carcinoma in situ and grade were combined into scores giving one- and five-year probabilities of recurrence and progression. The tables underpin the low, intermediate and high-risk groups used in guidelines.
The risk groups that decide whether a patient gets a single chemotherapy instillation, BCG, or early cystectomy trace back to this work. Later models (CUETO, the 2021 EAU risk groups) refine the estimates for BCG-treated patients.