[Considerations relating to multiple primary carcinomas of the urinary tract (author's transl)]

The patient with more than one primary malignant neoplasm has ceased to be a pathologic curiosity and has instead become a practical problem. It is possible for a patient to have two simultaneous developping independant cancers, but is also possible for a second primary cancer to develop in a cancer prone individual after the initial malignant lesion has been removed by radical surgical procedures. The generally improved survival rate after treatment of cancer has permitted more patients to live long enough for a second or even a third primary lesion to develop and it probably also reflects the more thorough pathological studies in both surgical and autopsy cases. It may be hoped that factors of genetic predisposition, ethiology and pathogenesis that are obscure in the patient with single lesions may be brought out in patients with multiple cancers. We present the case of a 83 years old patient with three different primary malignancies. His first tumour was a clear cell carcinoma of the left kidney at the age of 71, followed by a transitional cell carcinoma gr. II/IV of the bladder seven years later, and followed by a third one two and a half years latter which was a distinct adeno carcinoma of the prostate.