Who needs further evaluations to diagnose upper urinary tract urothelial cancers among patients with abnormal findings by enhanced CT?

OBJECTIVE: We evaluated who would need further evaluations such as retrograde pyelography (RP) and/or ureteroscopy to diagnose upper urinary tract urothelial cancers (UUTUCs) when abnormal findings for the upper urinary tract (UUT) were detected by enhanced computed tomography (CT). METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed 125 patients who underwent enhanced CT for various reasons and had abnormal findings for the UUT. Patients whose tumors were suspected to be of extraureteral origin were excluded. All patients received RP and/or ureteroscopy to evaluate the UUTUCs. RESULTS: The median age of the 125 patients was 70 years and gross hematuria (26.4%) was the most frequently observed symptoms. RP, ureteroscopy and both were performed for 121, 59 and 55 patients, respectively. CT revealed tumor-like lesions in 58 patients and the other patients had non-tumor-like lesions. UUTUCs were found in 43 (34.4%) of the 125 patients. All of them had tumor-like lesions on CT. In 58 patients who had tumor-like lesions on CT, univariate and multivariate analyses revealed that tumor diameter and tumor enhancement were significant predictive factors for UUTUCs. ROC curve analysis of enhanced CT to diagnose UUTUCs revealed that a tumor diameter of 18 mm was the best cutoff point. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were 90.0%, 98.8% and 92.7% for RP and 95.5%, 100% and 97.1% for ureteroscopy, respectively. Both of them had high sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. CONCLUSION: We should decide to evaluate the UUT according to the tumor diameter on enhanced CT. When we evaluate the UUT in patients with tumor diameters of less than 20 mm, ureteroscopy is recommended.