Clinical and pathological characteristics and prognostic analysis of upper tract urothelial carcinoma with concurrent histological variants / 中华泌尿外科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the clinical and pathological characteristics and prognosis of upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) with concurrent other histological variants.Methods:The clinical data of 566 UTUC patients admitted to Peking University People's Hospital from January 2007 to April 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. Among them, 289 were males and 277 were females, with an average age of (67.3±10.0)years old. Among the patients, 97 had a history of smoking, 29 had undergone kidney transplantation, 120 had diabetes, 76 had coronary heart disease, 146 had hyperlipidemia, 271 had hypertension, and 50 had a history of chronic kidney disease. Among the UTUC cases, 366 had concurrent hydronephrosis, 55 had concurrent bladder cancer, and 43 had a history of previous bladder cancer. The distribution included 210 cases of renal pelvis carcinoma, 5 cases of carcinoma at the renal pelvis-ureter junction, 226 cases of ureteral carcinoma, and 125 cases of multifocal tumors. Patients were classified into the pure UTUC group and the UTUC with concurrent other histological variants group based on postoperative pathology, and their clinical and pathological features were compared. Logistic regression analysis was used to explore risk factors for the occurrence of histological variations in UTUC. The log-rank test was employed to compare the overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) between the two groups, while Cox regression analysis was performed to investigate prognostic factors.Results:Among the 566 cases, 511 were pure UTUC and 55 were UTUC with concurrent other histological variants. Among the latter, 30 cases had squamous differentiation, 6 had glandular differentiation, 5 had mucinous differentiation, 5 had sarcomatoid carcinoma, 2 had micropapillary carcinoma, 2 had neuroendocrine carcinoma, 1 had giant cell carcinoma, and 4 had other mixed histological variations. The proportion of patients with a history of kidney transplantation was higher in the UTUC with concurrent histological variants group than that in the pure UTUC group [14.5% (8/55) vs. 4.1% (21/511)], with statistically significant difference ( P=0.003). In the UTUC with concurrent histological variants group, the proportion of postoperative high-grade tumors [98.2% (54/55) vs. 80.2% (410/511)], muscle-invasive tumors [89.1% (49/55) vs. 68.1% (348/511)], lymph node metastasis tumors [10.9% (6/55) vs. 2.3% (12/511)], and maximum tumor diameter [(3.60±2.64) cm vs. (2.96±1.98) cm] were higher than those in the pure UTUC group ( P<0.05). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that a history of kidney transplantation ( OR=4.991, 95% CI 1.749-13.615, P=0.002) was an independent predictive factor for the occurrence of histological variants. Follow-up was conducted for 1 to 174 months, with a median follow-up time of 32.8 months. UTUC with concurrent histological variants was significantly associated with worse OS and CSS ( P<0.05). Multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that histological variants were an independent risk factor for OS ( HR=1.860, 95% CI 1.228-2.816, P=0.003) and CSS ( HR=2.146, 95% CI 1.349-3.412, P=0.001). Conclusions:UTUC with concurrent other histological variants exhibited higher postoperative tumor grade and stage compared to pure UTUC, and UTUC with concurrent other histological variants was an independent risk factor for worse prognosis.