Table 1.
Patient and tumor characteristics at baseline
| Variable | No of | No of CTC+ | p-value |
| patients | patients (%) | ||
| All patients | 31 | 17 (54.8) | |
| Gender | |||
| Female | 9 | 5 (55.6) | 1.0a |
| Male | 22 | 12 (54.5) | |
| Age | |||
| <65 | 13 | 5 (38.5) | 0.23b |
| ≥65 | 18 | 12 (66.7) | |
| Tumor primary site‡ | |||
| Bladder | 26 | 13 (50.0) | 0.35a |
| Upper tract | 5 | 4 (80.0) | |
| Metastatic sites | |||
| Lymph-nodes | 21 | 12 (57.1) | 0.21c |
| Liver-Lung-Bone | 17 | 11 (64.7) | |
| Other* | 5 | 1 (20.0) | |
| Histology | |||
| Pure UC | 24 | 14 (58.3) | 0.47c |
| Other | 7 | 3 (42.9) | |
| Smoking status§ | |||
| Never smoker | 9 | 3 (33.3) | 0.11d |
| Former smoker | 11 | 5 (45.5) | |
| Current smoker | 9 | 7 (77.8) | |
| MSKCC score | |||
| 0 | 15 | 7 (46.7) | 0.38e |
| 1 | 10 | 6 (60.0) | |
| 2 | 6 | 4 (66.7) |
Abbreviations: CTC: circulating tumor cell; UC: urothelial carcinoma. ‡One patient had disease in both sites. *Peritoneum, soft tissue, pleura, brain. §The analyses involved 29/31 patients as data were missing. aFisher’s exact test. bChi-square test with Yates’ correction. cChi-square test. dFisher’s exact test, Never+Former smokers vs. Current smokers. eChi-square test, 0 vs. 1 + 2