Metastatic tumors to the urinary tract. Review a propos of two cases.

The problems of clinical diagnosis and treatment of metastatic tumors of the urinary tract remain very important, despite the relative rarity of these tumors and the development of new imaging techniques. We report two such cases. The first one refers to a 63-year-old man, who presented with a tumor of the right kidney. Postoperatively, the lesion proved to be a metastasis of a small-cell lung carcinoma. In the second case, a 59-year-old man was admitted with acute anuria and a history of infiltrating ductal carcinoma of the breast. His anuria was resolved by passage of ureteral stents, but relapsed soon after their removal. Thus, a ureterostomy was performed. Intraoperatively, an extensive metastatic infiltration of the ureters by the mammary tumor was discovered. Reviewing the world literature, we discuss the diagnostic and therapeutic clues of these tumors.