UROLOGICAL TUMORS IN GERMANY - BASIC DATA ON 56,013 CASES FROM HOSPITAL CANCER REGISTRIES

Since 1985 a special work group involved in the coordination of hospit al cancer registries in Germany (AKKK) has been collecting, storing an d analysing data on tumour patients, received from cancer centres, onc ological departments and specialised practices. The documentation of t umour patients is based, among other things, on information concerning localisation, histological findings and tumour spread. The data are s tored in a central database administered by the work group. At present it contains data on approximately 500,000 oncological patients. In th e period from 1987 to 1992, 56,013 initial entries were made concernin g patients with urological tumours. Of these cases, tumours of the kid ney (n = 11,424) constituted 20.4 %. In 94.6 % of the cases, histologi cal investigation revealed a renal cell carcinoma - pT1: 5.8 %; pT2: 5 3.6 %, pT3: 37.2 % and pT4: 3.4 %. Tumours of the urinary bladder (n = 16,246) constituted 29.0 % of all urological tumours. In 93.8 % of th e cases a transitional cell carcinoma was detected - pTis: 1.0 %; pTa: 36.9 %; pT1: 29.6 %; pT2: 16.9 %; pT3: 11.4 %; pT3: 4.4 %. Transition al cell carcinomas of the ureter or of the collecting system (n = 1,84 6) constituted 3.3 % of the cases. The proportion of testicular tumour s (n = 6,594) amounted to 11.8 %; 53.6 % of these germ-cell tumours (n = 6,281) were seminomas and 46.6 % were non-seminomas. In all, 66.3 % of the cases were lymph-node negative. Tumours of the prostate (n = 1 9,903) constituted 35.5 % of the cases. In the period from 1987 to 199 2, the proportion of lymph-node-positive prostate carcinomas decreased from 39.8 % to 16.2 %. The detailed analysis of these data shows how the hospital cancer registries can support the discussion regarding di agnosis and therapy of urological tumours.