Primary adenocarcinoma of urinary bladder.

We reviewed the clinical course and pathologic findings of 17 patients with adenocarcinoma of the urinary bladder at Massachusetts General Hospital between 1962 and 1978. The 12 men and 5 women were between thirty-eight and eighty-six years old (mean, sixty years). Five patients had urachal adenocarcinoma, 8 had pure adenocarcinoma, and 4 had mixed adenocarcinoma and transitional cell carcinoma. Twelve of 17 patients (71 per cent) had muscle invasion (T2-T3), and none had evidence of regional or distant metastases at initial presentation. The mean follow-up was four years. The treatment modalities included transurethral resection alone in 3 patients, radical cystectomy in 4, simple cystectomy in 2, salvage radical cystectomy in 1, and partial cystectomy in 7, 3 of whom also received radiation therapy. Over-all crude three and five-year survival rates were 60 per cent and 27 per cent, respectively; patients with invasive disease did poorly regardless of treatment modality. Five of 8 patients who died had evidence of metastatic disease, and only 1 patient with invasive disease was alive more than five years. However, 2 of 3 patients with invasive urachal adenocarcinoma who had preoperative radiotherapy plus partial cystectomy are free of disease at thirty-eight and sixty months.