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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.
Squamous cell carcinoma of the urethra is the type of urethral cancer that grows in the outer part of the urethra, where the lining is skin-like; in some cases HPV is involved. It is treated like anal or vulval cancer of the same cell type, with chemotherapy and radiotherapy together to avoid removing the urethra.
Squamous cell carcinoma arises in the distal (penile or anterior) urethra in men and the distal urethra and meatus in women, where the lining is squamous, and in the EAU classification it is one of the three principal histologies of primary urethral carcinoma with urothelial carcinoma and adenocarcinoma (Gakis 2013). It made up 30 percent of the 154 patients in the international collaboration (Gakis 2016). The parent page notes HPV in a proportion of cases, and p16 staining is listed among its terms.
How it differs from its parent: its site is distal, so it presents with a palpable mass, bleeding or obstruction near the meatus and drains to the inguinal nodes, like penile and vulval cancer, rather than to the pelvic nodes; that changes the surgery and the radiotherapy fields. Its treatment is borrowed from anal and vulval squamous cell carcinoma rather than from bladder cancer.
| Setting | Approach | Guideline |
|---|---|---|
| All stages | Treated as the parent page describes: urethra-sparing excision when small and distal; chemoradiation with fluorouracil and mitomycin or cisplatin when larger or node-positive, borrowed from anal cancer. | not mapped |