OBJECTIVE

To assess the clinicopathologic factors influencing survival in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma undergoing salvage chemotherapy.

METHODS

A retrospective review was conducted on cases of metastatic urothelial carcinoma who underwent cisplatin-based salvage chemotherapy at our institution between April 2003 and July 2011. The association of various clinicopathologic factors with survival was assessed. Survival curves were constructed by the Kaplan-Meier method. A log-rank test for univariate analysis and a Cox proportional hazards model for multivariate analysis were used.

RESULTS

Eighty-three cases were identified in the study. Among them, 64 patients were dead during the follow-up. The median survival was 14.6 months. Multivariate analysis evaluating variables at the start of chemotherapy demonstrated that liver metastasis, performance status score ≥ 2 and leukocyte counts ≥ 8000/µl were significant predictive factors for poor outcome. Based on these three pre-induction variables, a risk model predicting the overall survival from the initiation of chemotherapy was constructed, which classified patients into three groups with significantly different overall survival (P < 0.0001). Additionally, factors after induction of chemotherapy were studied, and poor response for chemotherapy and absence of focal treatment for metastatic lesions were also significantly associated with poorer survival.

CONCLUSIONS

Liver metastasis, poor performance status and higher leukocyte counts were independent poor prognostic indicators for metastatic urothelial carcinoma. Our risk classification enables an accurate prediction of survival that can be useful in deciding which patients are likely to benefit from salvage chemotherapy.