A propensity analysis comparing definitive chemo-radiotherapy for muscle-invasive squamous cell carcinoma of the bladder vs. urothelial carcinoma of the bladder using the National Cancer Database

•Limited information is known about treatment outcomes for squamous cell carcinoma of the bladder (SqCC).•Treatment for SqCC is extrapolated from urothelial carcinoma.•Outcomes of chemoRT for SqCC are very limited.•Following chemoRT, patients with SqCC do worse than counterparts with urothelial carcinoma. Squamous cell carcinoma (SqCC) is the second most common histology of primary bladder cancer, but still very limited information is known about its treatment outcomes. Most bladder cancer trials have excluded SqCC, and the current treatment paradigm for localized SqCC is extrapolated from results in urothelial carcinoma (UC). In particular, there is limited data on the efficacy of definitive chemo-radiotherapy (CRT). In this study, we compare overall survival outcomes between SqCC and UC patients treated with definitive CRT. We queried the National Cancer Database (NCDB) for muscle-invasive (cT2-T4 N0 M0) bladder cancer patients diagnosed from 2004 to 2013 who underwent concurrent CRT. Propensity matching was performed to match patients with SqCC to those with UC. OS was analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier survival method, and the log-rank test and Cox regression were used for analyses. 3332 patients met inclusion criteria of which 79 (2.3%) had SqCC. 73.4% of SqCC patients had clinical T2 disease compared to 82.5% of UC patients. Unadjusted median OS for SqCC patients was 15.6 months (95% CI, 11.7–19.6) versus 29.1 months (95% CI, 27.5–30.7) for those with UC (P