Role of magnetic resonance imaging in urinary bladder carcinoma: A tertiary care experience

Background: Bladder cancer is the most common malignancy of the urinary tract. Pre-operative tumour staging and grading play a significant role in treatment planning and prognosis estimation for bladder cancer. Aims and Objectives: This study aims to evaluate the utility of multiparametric-magnetic resonance imaging (mp-MRI) in detecting and staging bladder cancers and hence its role in final management. Materials and Methods: A total of 40 patients with documented urinary bladder mass undergoing mp-MRI before transurethral resection of bladder tumours for primary bladder cancer were identified and compared with post-operative histopathological reports. The data were collected and analysed using SPSS software. Results: The mean age in the study population was 53.68 ± 13.2 years, including 7 (17.5%) females and 33 (82.5%) males. Twenty-three (57.5%) of our patients had muscle invasion on the MRI pelvis. In muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma, there were significantly more patients with Vesical Imaging-Reporting and Data System (VIRADS) 3, VIRADS 4 and VIRADS 5 than in non-muscle invasive urothelial carcinoma. The proportion of patients with VIRADS 1 and VIRADS 2 on MRI pelvis was significantly lower in muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma than in non-muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma (P = 0.0001). Histopathology and muscle invasion on the MRI pelvis agree well in the current study (κ = 0.742; P = 0.0001). There was an overall concordance rate of 87.5% and an overall discordance rate of 12.5% between histopathology and muscle invasion on the MRI pelvis. The sensitivity, specificity, area under the curve, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic accuracy of the mp-MRI scan were 87.5%, 87.5%, 0.88, 91.3%, 82.35% and 87.50%, respectively. Conclusion: The mp-MRI and VIRADS scoring is an effective comprehensive tool with satisfactory sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic value for detecting muscle invasiveness of primary bladder cancer. We recommend VIRADS scoring for all bladder cancer patients for better pre-operative staging and overall management.