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OBJECTIVES To determine the role of lymph‐node (LN) dissection in patients undergoing surgery for upper urinary tract (UUT) cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS We reviewed the clinicopathological data from 312 patients with UUT cancer treated predominantly by nephroureterectomy. The relationship between clinical characteristics and cancer‐specific survival (CSS) was analysed, focusing on node‐related information. RESULTS In all, 166 patients had LN dissection while 146 did not (pNx). Multivariate analysis showed that T stage, grade and pN status were significant variables for CSS. The difference in survival between the pN0 and pNx groups remained significant in a multivariate analysis. The median (range) number of LNs removed was 6 (1–65). There was no significant difference in CSS between the 72 patients with fewer than six LNs removed and the 78 with six or more removed. CONCLUSIONS LN dissection is important for postoperative stratification of patients with UUT cancer because node‐positive disease was one of the variables with a significant adverse effect on survival. In addition, the significant difference in survival between the pN0 and pNx groups might indicate a therapeutic benefit of LN dissection, although removing more LNs did not uniformly increase the probability of CSS.

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