Metastatic adenocarcinoma of unknown primary site: analysis of 245 patients seen at The Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1965--1979.

A retrospective review of 245 patient with metastatic adenocarcinomas of unknown primary site (ACUP) seen at The Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1965--1979 was undertaken. The median survival was 3.1 months. Age, sex, race, and year of diagnosis did not appear to influence survival. Patients having their major site(s) of disease above the diaphragm experienced a significantly longer survival than patients whose disease was below the diaphragm (5.3 versus 2.3 months, P less than 0.05). As a group, patients treated with chemotherapy had no improvement in survival. However, the small number of patients treated with either cyclophosphamide or doxorubicin or both drugs had a median survival of greater than 9 months compared to 2.6 months for untreated or local radiotherapy-treated patients and 3.2 months for patients treated with 5-fluorouracil.