Prognostic factors in male urethral cancer

Male urethral cancer is a rare neoplasm, with the published literature consisting of small single-institution retrospective series. As such, there is no objective analysis of prognostic factors and treatment outcome. The author sought to use the population-based Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database to evaluate prognostic factors in male urethral cancer.

From 1988 to 2006, 2065 men were identified in the SEER database as having primary urethral cancer. Median follow-up was 2.5 years. Cancer-specific and overall survival was computed using the Kaplan-Meier method, and Cox proportional hazards analysis was used to evaluate patient age at diagnosis, year of diagnosis, race, histologic type, grade, T stage, nodal status, M stage, extent of surgery, and type of radiation as potential significant independent predictors of survival.

Overall survival at 5 and 10 years was 46.2% (95% confidence interval [CI], 43.9-48.6%) and 29.3% (95% CI, 26.6-32.0%), respectively, whereas cancer-specific survival at 5 and 10 years was 68.0% (95% CI, 65.5-70.5%) and 60.1% (95% CI, 57.0-63.2%), respectively. Advanced age, higher grade, higher T stage, systemic metastases, other histology versus transitional cell carcinoma (TCC), and no surgery versus radical resection were predictors of death and death from disease, whereas adenocarcinoma was associated with a lower likelihood of death and death from disease as compared with TCC. In addition, nodal metastasis was a predictor of death. Surgery had a better outcome than radiation for stage T2 -T4 nonmetastatic disease.

Age, grade, TNM stage, histology, and extent of surgery were predictive of overall and cancer-specific survival.