Introduction: Urological cancers can be challenging in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with neurological diseases. As a result, there are still uncertainties regarding the incidence and risk factors favouring the development of urological cancers in these patients. The aim of this study was to review the available evidence regarding the incidence for the development of urological cancers in neurological patients to provide a basis for future recommendations and research.
Evidence acquisition: A narrative review of the literature in Medline and Scopus up to June 2019 was performed.
Evidence synthesis: After screening 1729 records, 30 retrospective studies were retained. For bladder cancer (BC), 21 articles were identified, including a total of 673,663 patients. Among these patients, 4744 had a diagnosis of BC (1265 females, 3214 males, gender not reported in 265). In this group, 2514 were diagnosed with BC associated with a neurological disease. For prostate cancer (PC), 14 articles were identified, including a total of 831,889 men. Among these patients, 67,543 had a diagnosis of PC and 1457 had PC and a neurological disease. Two articles reported kidney cancer (KC), one reported testicular cancer (TC) and none described penile cancer or urothelial carcinomas of the upper urinary tract in neurological patients.
Conclusions: The incidence of urological cancers, especially BC and PC, in patients with neurological diseases appears comparable to the general population. However due to the paucity of studies, specific recommendations for the management are lacking in neurologically disabled patients. In this report we investigated the frequency of urinary tract cancers in patients with neurological diseases. We conclude that urological cancers, especially bladder and prostate cancer, in patients with neurological diseases occur with similar frequency as in the general population.