Systematic Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Feb 26, 2020; 8(4): 771-781
Published online Feb 26, 2020. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v8.i4.771
Lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma of the upper urinary tract: A systematic review of case reports
Shi-Cong Lai, Samuel Seery, Wei Zhang, Ming Liu, Guan Zhang, Jian-Ye Wang
Shi-Cong Lai, Ming Liu, Jian-Ye Wang, Department of Urology, Beijing Hospital, National Center of Gerontology, Beijing 100730, China
Shi-Cong Lai, Ming Liu, Jian-Ye Wang, Graduate School of Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, China
Samuel Seery, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100730, China
Wei Zhang, Department of Pathology, Beijing Hospital, National Center of Gerontology, Beijing 100730, China
Guan Zhang, Department of Urology, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing 100029, China
Author contributions: Lai SC and Seery S designed the study, conducted the systematic literature search to identify all pertinent studies, assessed eligibility and quality of each selected study, as well as performed data extraction and statistical analysis; Zhang W and Liu M coordinated the study and performed data acquisition; Lai SC, Seery S and Zhang G participated in collecting and interpreting the data, drafted and revised the paper; Zhang G and Wang JY participated in critical reviewing the paper; All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Jian-Ye Wang, MD, Professor, Surgeon, Surgical Oncologist, Department of Urology, Beijing Hospital, National Center of Gerontology, No. 1 Dahua Road, Dong Dan, Beijing 100730, China. wangjy@bjhmoh.cn
Received: October 20, 2019
Peer-review started: October 20, 2019
First decision: December 4, 2019
Revised: December 11, 2019
Accepted: December 22, 2019
Article in press: December 22, 2019
Published online: February 26, 2020
Core Tip

Core tip: Lymphoepithelioma-like carcinomas in the urinary tract are extremely rare, hence there is little evidence to provide clinical guidelines. Of the 28 participants included in this systematic review of case reports, 23 patients survived with no evidence of further metastasis. Survival analysis suggests pure histological subtypes, and patients who receive complete tumor resection have more favorable prognoses. As always in cancer care, early identification generally increases the probability of interventional success, although this evidence base must be developed with more rigorous testing and case reporting.