Clinicopathological features and treatment patterns of patients with cancer of unknown primary site (CUP): Mayo Clinic experience.

Abstract

e18803 Background: CUPs are a heterogeneous group of metastatic cancers for which a standardized diagnostic work-up fails to identify the site of origin at the time of diagnosis. CUP accounts for 3%-5% of all cancer diagnoses worldwide, and the natural history of patient with CUP differs from that of patients (pts) with cancer with known primary tumor. Here we report and summarize the clinical features of patients with CUP treated at Mayo Clinic. Methods: Retrospective study of patients treated at Mayo Clinic Rochester MN from 2010 to 2021. Patient demographics, tumor-related variables, treatment-related variables, and clinical data were extracted. Descriptive statistics were used, and all data were analyzed by the SPSS version 22.0 software (SPSS, Chicago, IL, United States). Results: From a total of 214 pts, 207 pts were included, as primary tumor site was identified in 7 patients after initial evaluation. The pts in this study were predominantly white (87%) of female (50.2%) gender with a mean age of 63 (SD: 13) without history of smoking (51%) and either private or public insurance (82.6%). The predominant histology was adenocarcinoma (30%), followed by neuroendocrine neoplasms (27%), and carcinoma NOS (not otherwise specified) (25%). The most prevalent grade in this cohort was grade III with poorly differentiated tumor cells. All pts had diagnostic imaging and the most used imaging modalities included CT (81.2%), and PET-CT (43.5%). In our cohort, the 3 most common sites of metastases included lymph nodes (57.5%), liver (37.8%), lung (34.3%), and bone (23.7%); and in 64% of pts, there was a specific presentation pattern including liver-predominant (24.6%), lymph node-predominant (24.6%), bone-predominant (7.7%), and peritoneal carcinomatosis (7.7%). The majority of pts received systemic therapy (69%) as first line of therapy and the most frequent first line regimens included platinum-doublet (26.5%), gemcitabine-based regimen (20.7%), 5FU-based regimens (18%) and somatostatin analogs (16.7%); whereas salvage radiation and ablation were offered to 11% of pts and surgery to 17%. The median follow-up time was 22 months (IQR: 45) with a median survival time of 23 months and the 3-year cumulative survival rate was 30%. Conclusions: The heterogenous nature of CUPs and lack of specific immunohistochemical signature prevents primary tissue of origin diagnoses in CUP pts. Without the identification of a primary origin site, treatment is restricted to generic chemotherapy with limited benefit as demonstrated in this cohort.