BACKGROUND: Carcinoma of unknown primary origin (CUP) is a heterogeneous group of cancers defined by the presence of metastatic disease without clinical or radiological evidence of primary tumourat presentation.
OBJECTIVE: Our study provides information about the epidemiological, clinical and histological particularities of CUP in Albanian population.
METHODS: We analyzed retrospectively the data of 84 consecutive patients diagnosed with CUP at the University Hospital Center Mother Teresa, during 2010-2015. The epidemiological, clinical and histopathological data were recorded for all patients.
RESULTS:The mean age at diagnosis of CUP patients was 57.9 ±14.4 years (range 19-85 years); 3.6% of them were younger than 25 years old and 77.4% were older than 50 years old. The male to female ratio was 1.8. The most common metastatic site was in the lymph nodes 45,2%, bone 38 % and lung 16.7 % of the patients. In this study, 38/84 patients (39,4%) were localized nodal CUP and 46/84 patients (60,6%) were disseminated CUP. No significant differences were found between male and female concerning metastatic sites. Age was different in relation with clinical presentation.
Localized nodal CUP was found in 60% of patients older than 50 years old, mean age was 59.6 ±11yearsand the most common site was the cervical lymph nodes in 63% of the patients. According to the histopathological finding, patients without histologically confirmed disease were found in 50% of CUP patients. Adenocarcinoma of various differentiations is the commonest histopathological subtype in 20 % of the patients and squamous cell carcinoma 15 %. Poorly differentiated histology was found in 50 % of the CUP patients.
At diagnosis, 10% of the patients had both visceral and bone metastasis and only 20 % of them had elevated tumor markers level.
CONCLUSION:Our study provides the first evidence on epidemiological and histological characteristics of cancer of primary unknown in Albanian.Further subgroup analysis studies are needed to evaluate the influence of these factors on the clinical prognosis and survival.
