PURPOSE: Pelvic lymph node involvement in penile cancer carries a poor prognosis and therefore there is controversy on the curative role of pelvic lymph node dissection (pLND).
This study was conducted with the aim to analyze characteristics of tumor-positive inguinal regions predictive for pelvic lymph node involvement in patients prophylactically treated with pLND.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: All chemonaive consecutive cases treated at our institute with prophylactic pLND were included since 2001. Generalized estimating equation model was used for prediction of pelvic node involvement based on inguinal characteristics. Disease-specific survival (DSS) was calculated with Kaplan-Meier method.
RESULTS: 79 chemotherapy naive patients without preoperative evidence of pelvic disease treated with prophylactic pLND, were included. 24% patients had positive pelvic nodes. Inguinal extranodal extension (ENE) or ≥2 tumor-positive nodes were predictive for having tumor-positive pelvic nodes. Five-year DSS in patients with pelvic involvement was 17%.
CONCLUSIONS: Inguinal ENE or ≥2 inguinal tumor-positive lymph nodes are predictive for pelvic tumor-positivity in patients without evidence of pelvic involvement. However DSS remains poor in patients with pelvic node involvement treated with surgery only.
Written by:
Djajadiningrat RS, van Werkhoven E, Horenblas S. Are you the author?
Department of Urology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Department of Biometrics at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Reference: J Urol. 2014 Dec 10. pii: S0022-5347(14)05060-5.
doi: 10.1016/j.juro.2014.12.019
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 25498573