# Adenocarcinoma of the urethra (including clear cell adenocarcinoma)

Source: https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/  
OnCo record `urethral-adenocarcinoma` (Cancer). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Adenocarcinoma of the urethra is a gland-forming type of urethral cancer, more often seen in women, that can start in the small glands beside the urethra or in a pouch (diverticulum) in its wall. The clear cell form is its own entity in the WHO classification. No trial has been run in it, so it is treated by surgery at a specialist urological centre, advanced disease as on the parent page.

## Summary

Adenocarcinoma of the urethra arises from the periurethral (Skene and Littre) glands or from glandular metaplasia of the urethral lining, and the WHO classification of urinary and male genital tumours separates clear cell adenocarcinoma as a distinct entity. In the defining pathology series of 19 clear cell adenocarcinomas of the urethra, 18 patients were women and one a man, aged 35 to 80 (average 58); 12 tumours, all in women, arose within a urethral diverticulum, and the tumours showed the tubulocystic, papillary and diffuse patterns with hobnail and clear cells that characterise the type (Oliva and Young 1996). The main diagnostic pitfall is nephrogenic adenoma, a benign lesion that shares clear cells and tubules (Young and Scully 1985).

How it differs from its parent: it is the histology in which women predominate, in which a urethral diverticulum is a recognised site of origin, and in which the parent's bladder-cancer and anal-cancer treatment analogies fit least well because neither urothelial chemotherapy nor squamous chemoradiation has been tested in it. Clear cell adenocarcinoma is morphologically the same tumour that occurs in the vagina and cervix, which the corpus covers on the vaginal adenocarcinoma page.

How common: no incidence figure for the type alone is published; the parent page's fewer than one case per million a year covers all urethral cancer.

Treatment follows the EAU guideline for the parent: complete surgical excision, from diverticulectomy with a margin for small tumours to anterior exenteration for advanced disease, with radiotherapy for positive margins; systemic therapy has no evidence base of its own and is chosen case by case, which in practice means a specialist urological cancer centre, tumour profiling for a tumour-agnostic option, and a search for open trials (EAU Guidelines: primary urethral carcinoma; NCI PDQ).

## Fields

- Kind: Cancer
- Last checked: 2026-09-24
- Also known as: Urethral adenocarcinoma; Clear cell adenocarcinoma of the urethra; Adenocarcinoma (including clear cell adenocarcinoma of the female urethra); Skene gland adenocarcinoma; Urethral diverticulum carcinoma
- Tags: subtype-page; wave4; rare
- Group: genitourinary
- Burden: Adenocarcinoma was 17 of 154 patients (11 percent) in the international collaboration's series (Gakis 2016). Clear cell adenocarcinoma is rarer still: the largest pathology series holds 19 cases, 18 of them in women (Oliva and Young 1996).
- Subtypes: Clear cell adenocarcinoma of the urethra (women; often in a urethral diverticulum); Adenocarcinoma of Skene or Littre gland origin; Enteric-type (columnar or mucinous) adenocarcinoma of the urethra
- Biomarkers: Histological pattern (tubulocystic, papillary, diffuse) and distinction from nephrogenic adenoma; Association with a urethral diverticulum; Margin status after excision

## Sections of this record

The page is a hub with ten sections in reading order; large sections have their own page. The same plan as JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/sections.json

- Overview (on the hub): The TL;DR, the family this cancer belongs to, the organ, who gets it and what the state of the art is. https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/#overview
- Types and stages (on the hub): Anatomy, the subtypes and how they differ, how it is staged, and where advanced disease spreads. https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/#what-it-is [3 subtypes]
- Symptoms and diagnosis (on the hub): How this cancer shows itself, how the diagnosis is confirmed, and the biomarkers clinicians test for. https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/#finding-it [3 biomarkers]
- Treatment (on the hub): The standard of care by setting, the medicines, surgery and radiotherapy named in it, and the regimens behind them. https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/#treating-it [1 setting]
- Trials and papers (on the hub): Trials recruiting now, the landmark trials, the trials held by this cancer's subtypes, the key papers and what they mean, the latest literature, and the milestones year by year. https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/#evidence
- Biology and targets (on the hub): The molecular landscape: the targets and how often each appears, the pathways, the mechanics stages and the preclinical models. https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/#science
- Countries and centres (own page): Cases by country, the UK and NHS pathway and other country lenses, the expert centres with trials on record, and the centres named on this cancer's subtypes. https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/where-you-are/
- Decisions and support (on the hub): The decisions you may face, the aids that walk through them, the warnings on record, the first sixty days and the questions to ask. https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/#living-with-it [7 questions]
- Pipeline and open problems (own page): Everything in development, the medicines held by this cancer's subtypes, the open problems and what is being done about them, the roadmaps, and what changed on this record. https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/coming/
- Data (own page): Every connected record, the notes, the JSON, Markdown and RDF twins, and where the record came from and when it was checked. https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-adenocarcinoma/data/

## Standard of care

- All stages: Treated as the parent page describes: complete surgical excision, radiotherapy for positive margins, and case-by-case systemic therapy in the absence of trials. ([Urethral cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral/))

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urethral_cancer
- NCI PDQ: urethral cancer treatment: https://www.cancer.gov/types/urethral/patient/urethral-treatment-pdq
- EAU Guidelines: primary urethral carcinoma: https://uroweb.org/guidelines/primary-urethral-carcinoma
- Gakis 2016, World J Urol: international collaboration on primary urethral carcinoma, 154 patients: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00345-015-1583-7
- Oliva and Young 1996, Modern Pathology: clear cell adenocarcinoma of the urethra, 19 cases (PMID 8733766): https://europepmc.org/article/MED/8733766
- Young and Scully 1985, Am J Surg Pathol: clear cell adenocarcinoma of the bladder and urethra: https://doi.org/10.1097/00000478-198511000-00005

## Connected records

- cancers: [Squamous cell carcinoma of the urethra](https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-squamous-cell-carcinoma/), [Urethral cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral/), [Urothelial carcinoma of the urethra](https://onco.cc/cancers/urethral-urothelial-carcinoma/), [Vaginal adenocarcinoma (including DES-associated clear cell adenocarcinoma)](https://onco.cc/cancers/vaginal-adenocarcinoma/)

---
JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/urethral-adenocarcinoma.json