Percutaneous urinary diversion in patients with hormone-refractory prostate cancer.

Twenty-two patients with hormone-refractory prostate cancer underwent percutaneous urinary diversion; at the time, all but one had metastatic disease. Eleven patients received postnephrostomy therapy. The median survival time for all the patients was one hundred nineteen days. Overall, 41 percent of the patients' remaining lifetime was spent in the hospital. Six never left the hospital and 10 required rehospitalization; the remaining 6 patients were never rehospitalized. The median survival time for this group of patients was shorter than the expected survival of similar patients without ureteral obstruction. It appears that percutaneous urinary diversion does not improve the quality of life of these patients.