The prognostic effect of salvage surgery and radiotherapy in patients with recurrent primary urethral carcinoma

Background To evaluate the impact of salvage therapy (ST) on overall survival (OS) in recurrent primary urethral cancer (PUC). Patients A series of 139 patients (96 men, 43 women; median age = 66, interquartile range: 57–77) were diagnosed with PUC at 10 referral centers between 1993 and 2012. The modality of ST of recurrence (salvage surgery vs. radiotherapy) was recorded. Kaplan-Meier analysis with log-rank was used to estimate the impact of ST on OS (median follow-up = 21, interquartile range: 5–48). Results The 3-year OS for patients free of any recurrence (I), with solitary or concomitant urethral recurrence (II), and nonurethral recurrence (III) was 86.5%, 74.5%, and 48.2%, respectively (P = 0.002 for I vs. III and II vs. III; P = 0.55 for I vs. II). In the 80 patients with recurrences, the modality of primary treatment of recurrence was salvage surgery in 30 (37.5%), salvage radiotherapy (RT) in 8 (10.0%), and salvage surgery plus RT in 5 (6.3%) whereas 37 patients did not receive ST for recurrence (46.3%). In patients with recurrences, those who underwent salvage surgery or RT-based ST had similar 3-year OS (84.9%, 71.6%) compared to patients without recurrence (86.7%, P = 0.65), and exhibited superior 3-year OS compared to patients who did not undergo ST (38.0%, P<0.001 compared to surgery, P = 0.045 to RT-based ST, P = 0.29 for surgery vs. RT-based ST). Conclusions In this study, patients who underwent ST for recurrent PUC demonstrated improved OS compared to those who did not receive ST and exhibited similar survival to those who never developed recurrence after primary treatment.