[A clinical study of the renal pelvis and ureteral cancer]

During the 13 years from 1976 to 1988, 160 patients with renal pelvic and ureteral cancer were reviewed based on a new general rule for clinical and pathological studies on renal pelvic and ureteral cancer of Japanese Urological Association. There were 71 renal pelvic cancers, 80 ureteral cancers, and 9 cancers in both regions. Patients ranged in age from 35 to 91 years old (average: 63). The involved side was right in 63 and left in 97. The most frequent symptom was hematuria, which was seen in 81.1%. IVP revealed the findings of filling defects, hydronephrosis, and non-visualized kidney in 99.7% of the patients. Total nephroureterectomy with bladder cuff resection was performed in 123 cases, nephroureterectomy in 16 cases, nephrectomy in 5 cases, partial ureterectomy in 10 case, and biopsy in 6 cases. As adjuvant therapies, irradiation was performed in 32 and chemotherapy in 123. Histologically, 156 were with transitional cell carcinoma, one squamous cell carcinoma, one adenocarcinoma and 2 unclear, the over-all survival rate of this study at 1, 3, 5 and 10 years were 86.8%, 73.0%, 65.3% and 45.6%, respectively. No patient with lymph-node metastasis (N+) survived longer than 5 years. All patients with M(1) died within one year. There were no difference of prognosis between renal pelvic cancer and ureteral cancer. Regarding various prognostic factors, our series gave the same results as previous reports. However, it should be stressed that pathological grading was the most important prognostic factor.