Preoperative Pyuria Is a Poor Prognostic Factor in Patients With Urothelial Carcinoma of the Upper Urinary Tract After Surgery.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this study was to determine the prognostic significance of preoperative pyuria in patients with upper urinary tract urothelial carcinoma after surgery.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

We retrospectively evaluated data on 157 patients with nonmetastatic upper urinary tract urothelial carcinoma who had undergone surgery at our institution. The associations between clinical features and advanced pathological findings were evaluated using a logistic regression model. Recurrence-free survival (RFS), cancer-specific survival (CSS), and overall survival (OS) were assessed with the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression analysis. The influence of pyuria on the predictive accuracy of the multivariate model was assessed using the concordance index.

RESULTS

The median postoperative follow-up among patients who survived was 48.1 months. Preoperative pyuria was significantly correlated with worse RFS, CSS, and OS (P < .001 each). Pyuria was also associated with significantly increased risk of a high pathological T stage (≥ pT3; odds ratio, 2.99; P = .003), high tumor Grade (G3; odds ratio, 2.25; P = .038), and lymphovascular invasion (odds ratio, 2.25; P = .008). Moreover, multivariate Cox regression analyses showed that pyuria was an independent prognostic factor for RFS (hazard ratio, 3.02; P < .001), CSS (hazard ratio, 2.15; P = .043), and OS (hazard ratio, 2.10; P = .019). For CSS, the addition of pyuria to the multivariate model increased its predictive accuracy from 0.87 to 0.90.

CONCLUSION

Preoperative pyuria is significantly associated with CSS, OS, and increased risk of locally advanced disease and subsequent disease recurrence in patients with upper urinary tract urothelial carcinoma who undergo surgery.