Patients treated for bladder cancer with a surgery known as radical cystectomy have worse outcomes if they are smokers, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis by Keck Medicine of USC. Cacciamani and fellow Keck Medicine researchers searched databases to select 17 studies that reported on the impact of tobacco smoking on chemotherapy response and survival outcomes of 13,777 patients following radical cystectomy. Of these patients, 40.8% were active smokers at the time of the surgery, 14.1% former smokers and 45.1% had never smoked or were not smoking at the time of the surgery.