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4 slides generated from the cancer page, with a quiz from the open benchmark and speaker notes that cite the sources. Arrow keys move between slides; Print gives one slide per page.
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.
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.
| Setting | Approach | Guideline |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | not mapped |