To understand cystoscopic surveillance practices among patients with low-risk non–muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Using a validated natural language processing algorithm, we included patients newly diagnosed with low-risk (ie low-grade Ta) NMIBC from 2005 to 2011 in the VA. Patients were followed until cancer recurrence, death, last contact, or 2 years after diagnosis. Based on guidelines, surveillance overuse was defined as >1 cystoscopy if followed <1 year, >2 cystoscopies if followed 1 to <2 years, or >3 cystoscopies if followed for 2 years. We identified patient, provider, and facility factors associated with overuse using multilevel logistic regression.

Overuse occurred in 75% of patients (852/1135) – with an excess of 1846 more cystoscopies performed than recommended. Adjusting for 14 factors, overuse was associated with patient race (odds ratio [OR] 0.49, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.28, 0.85 unlisted race vs White), having 2 comorbidities (OR 1.60, 95% CI: 1.00, 2.55 vs no comorbidities), and earlier year of diagnosis (OR 2.50, 95% CI: 1.29, 4.83 for 2005 vs 2011, and OR 2.03, 95% CI: 1.11, 3.69 for 2006 vs 2011). On sensitivity analyses assuming all patients were diagnosed with multifocal or large low-grade tumors (ie, intermediate-risk), overuse would have still occurred in 45% of patients.

Overuse of cystoscopy among patients with low-risk NMIBC was common, raising concerns about bladder cancer surveillance cost and quality. However, few factors were associated with overuse. Further qualitative research is needed to identify other determinants of overuse not readily captured in administrative data.