Socio-economic deprivation and outcomes following radical nephroureterectomy for clinically localized upper tract transitional cell carcinoma

Background Little is known about the effects of socio-economic deprivation on the oncological outcomes of surgically treated upper tract transitional cell carcinoma. Methods From January 1998 to December 2012, 161 patients underwent nephroureterectomy for upper urinary tract cancer at our tertiary medical centre. We included 124 patients where complete data were available for further analysis. This study also analysed the impact of the reported risk factors such as grade, stage, multifocality in addition to socio-economic deprivation on the long-term oncological outcomes after nephroureterectomy. Results One hundred and twenty-four (77 %) patients with complete data for socio-economic status were analysed in this study. The median age of the cohort was 73 years (interquartile range 45–86). There were 20, 18, 17, 40 and 29 patients in different socio-economic categories ranging from 1 to 5, respectively. The median duration of follow-up was 68 months (9–174). A statistically higher grade ( p value 0.005) and higher stage ( p value 0.0005) disease was seen in patients from less deprived categories on both univariate and multivariate analyses. The cancer-specific mortality and follow-up recurrences, however, did not significantly differ between the different socio-economic categories on multivariate analysis ( p value 0.13; 0.6) and on univariate and multivariate analyses. A higher number of patients with multifocal disease and concomitant carcinoma in situ (CIS) had disease recurrences which were statistically significant ( p values 0.026 and 0.014, respectively) on multivariate analysis. Conclusions A lower recurrence-free survival was observed in patients with multifocal disease and those with concomitant CIS following nephroureterectomy for clinically localized disease. Long-term follow-up did not show any significant differences in cancer-specific survival between different deprivation categories.