Urothelial tumors of the urinary bladder in young patients: a clinicopathologic study of 59 cases.

CONTEXT: Urothelial tumors are rare in young patients. Because of their rarity, the natural history of the disease in young patients remains poorly understood.

OBJECTIVE

To understand the pathologic and clinical features of urothelial tumors of the urinary bladder in young patients.

DESIGN

We identified 59 young patients with urothelial tumors of the urinary bladder treated at our institution and analyzed the tumors' pathologic features and the patients' clinical outcomes.

RESULTS

All patients were 30 years or younger, with a mean age of 23.5 years (range, 4-30). Thirty-eight patients (64%) were male, and 21 (36%) were female. Most tumors were noninvasive, papillary urothelial tumors (49 of 59; 83%), including papillary urothelial neoplasms of low malignant potential (7 of 49; 14%), low-grade papillary urothelial carcinomas (38 of 49; 78%), and high-grade papillary urothelial carcinomas (4 of 49; 8%). Only a few (n=10) of the urothelial tumors were invasive, invading the lamina propria (n=5; 50%), muscularis propria (n=4; 40%), or perivesical soft tissue (n=1; 10%). Clinical follow-up information was available for 41 patients (69%), with a mean follow-up time of 77 months. Of 31 patients with noninvasive papillary urothelial tumors, only 1 patient (3%) later developed an invasive urothelial carcinoma and died of the disease, and 30 of these patients (97%) were alive at the end of follow-up, although 10 (32%) had local tumor recurrences. In the 10 patients with invasive urothelial carcinomas, 3 patients (30%) died of the disease and 5 others (50%) were alive with metastases (the other 2 [20%] were alive with no recurrence).

CONCLUSION

Urothelial tumors in young patients are mostly noninvasive, papillary carcinomas and have an excellent prognosis; however, a small subset of patients may present with high-grade invasive urothelial carcinomas that result in poor clinical outcomes.