BACKGROUND:

Radical cystectomy (RC) is the standard of care in patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer. The impact of perioperative red blood cell (RBC) transfusion on oncological outcomes after RC is not clearly established as the existing publications show conflicting results.

OBJECTIVES:

The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to investigate the prognostic role of perioperative RBC transfusion on oncological outcomes after RC.

METHODS:

Systematic online search on PubMed was conducted, based on PRISMA criteria for publications reporting on RBC transfusion during RC. Publications with the following criteria were included: (I) reported data on perioperative blood transfusion; (II) Reported Hazard ratio (HR) and 95% -confidence interval (CI) for the impact of transfusion on survival outcomes. Primary outcome was the impact of perioperative RBC transfusion on recurrence-free survival (RFS), cancer-specific survival (CSS) and overall survival (OS). Risk of bias assessment was performed using Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. Statistical analysis was performed using Revman 5.4 software.

RESULTS:

From 27 primarily identified publications, 19 eligible articles including 22897 patients were selected. Perioperative RBC transfusion showed no impact on RFS (Z = 1.34; p = 0,18) and significant negative impact on CSS (Z = 2.67; p = 0.008) and OS (Z = 3.22; p = 0.001). Intraoperative RBC transfusion showed no impact on RFS (Z = 0.58; p = 0.56) and CSS (Z = 1.06; p = 0.29) and OS (Z = 1.47; p = 0.14).

Postoperative RBC transfusion showed non-significant trend towards improved RFS (Z = 1.89; p = 0.06) and no impact on CSS (Z = 1.56; p = 0.12) and OS (Z = 0.53 p = 0.60).

CONCLUSION:

In this meta-analysis, we found perioperative blood transfusion to be a significant predictor only for worse CSS and OS but not for RFS. This effect may be determined by differences in tumor stages and patient comorbidities for which this meta-analysis cannot control due to lack of respective raw data.