Purpose: To evaluate the influence of preoperative factors on the survival of patients diagnosed with upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) who underwent a radical nephroureterectomy (RNU).
Methods: A multicentre retrospective study was performed on all patients with UTUC who underwent a RNU. Multiple preoperative criteria were tested as prognostic factors for cancer-specific survival (CSS) using univariate and multivariable Cox regression analyses.
Results: Overall, 476 patients with a median age of 69.2 (IQR 60.8-76.5) years were included. The median follow-up was 27.8 months (IQR 10.5-49.3). At the time of diagnosis, 400 (84.1 %) patients presented with symptoms and 76 patients (15.9 %) were asymptomatic. Renal failure, altered general health, a preoperative locally advanced tumour and multifocal disease appeared to be preoperative prognostic factors for CSS (p = 0.01, 0.03, 0.001 and 0.03, respectively) in the univariate analysis. Only renal failure (p = 0.03), a preoperative locally advanced tumour (0.004), and multifocal locations (p = 0.01) were confirmed as independent factors of CSS in the multivariate analysis. The independent prognosticators of definitive muscle-invasive stage and non-organ-confined disease were preoperative renal failure (p = 0.02, 0.027, respectively), locally advanced stage (p < 0.001, <0.001, respectively) and positive cytology (p = 0.006, 0.003 respectively). Female gender was independent factor only for prediction of final non-organ-confined disease (p = 0.007). The addition of these parameters in our preoperative complex model permitted the prediction of muscle-invasive or locally advanced disease in 65.3 and 67.2 % of patients, respectively.
Conclusions: Patients with preoperative impaired renal function, locally advanced stage and multifocal tumours before RNU had worse survival outcomes compared to other patients.