2024 Volume 44 Issue 4 Pages 386-390
For upper urothelial carcinoma (UTUC), minimally invasive treatment with laser ablation combined with ureteropyeloscope (URS) for small, solitary, low-grade, low-risk UTUC of less than 1 cm results in kidney-sparing treatment have recently been reported to be relatively good. An additional advantage of URS is the possibility of histopathological diagnosis prior to treatment. At our institution, we are working on laser resection with vaporization (LRV) as organ preservation not only for low-risk tumors. We investigated the association between biopsy pathology and recurrence in 37 patients (30 males and 7 females) who underwent LRV. Regarding lymphovascular invasion (LVI), 35 cases (94.6%) were negative. A multivariate analysis of the grade, invasion mode, LVI, coexisting carcinoma in situ (CIS) lesions, and biopsy pT stage that could be determined by biopsy pathology revealed that INF and LVI were independent predictors of recurrence. Although further investigation is necessary due to the limited number of cases, it was suggested that strict follow-up is required for cases found to be LVI-positive or infiltrative growth patterns by biopsy pathology.
