Morphologic variants of urothelial carcinoma, diagnosed in hasheminejad kidney center between years 2003 and 2013

Abstract

<h3>Background</h3> In recent years, several morphologic variants of urothelial carcinoma have been described and included in the 2004 World Health Organization Classification. We decided to identify which variants have been diagnosed in a 10 year period in Hasheminejad Kidney Center which is a referral center for genitourinary tumors in Iran. <h3>Material and methods</h3> All TUR bladder specimens, diagnosed as variants of urothelial carcinoma between 2003 and 2013 were included in our study. Age, sex, size of TUR-B specimen, pathologic staging and patient survival were collected. <h3>Results</h3> Ten squamous cell carcinomas and 11 adenocarcinoma of bladder were diagnosed. The morphological variants were as follows: 77, 10 and 8 urothelial carcinomas with squamoid, glandular and sarcomatoid differentiations respectively, 7 micropapillary carcinomas, 6 small cell carcinoma, 5 nested variants, 4 lymphoepithelioma like carcinoma, 2 with neuroendocrine features, 1 undifferentiated carcinoma, 1 with various histologic differentiations, 1 osteoclast rich giant cells and 1 with tubular and microcystic patterns. Most variants had no significant difference in survival comparing stage by stage. Four out of 7 patients with micropapillary carcinomas died with a mean of 4 months after diagnosis and had shorter survival than usual urothelial carcinomas. Small cell carcinomas also had a shorter survival.