Introduction:

the prognosis of patients with metastatic cancer of unknown origin is precarious, only 25% of patients are alive at one year.

Objective:

to determine the influence of histopathological diagnosis on one-year survival in patients with cancer metastases of unknown origin.

Methods:

an observational cohort study was conducted with patients admitted to the "Arnaldo Milián Castro" Hospital in the period from January 2011 to December 2017.

Results:

57 patients were studied, 10 were alive and 47 died. Arterial hypertension (47.4%) and smoking (45.6%) were the most frequent personal pathologic antecedents. Asthenia, anorexia and weight loss, among others, were the clinical manifestations at admission most significantly associated with mortality. In the group of deceased patients the mean values of hemoglobin, serum albumin and triglycerides were significantly lower, while lactate dehydrogenase was higher. Patients with unknown primary tumor did not survive to one year and approximately 20% survive to six months, those with a diagnosis of poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma approximately 10% survived to 11 months and patients with lung primary survived approximately 10% to one year. Having unknown primary tumor increased the risk of dying approximately 3.6-fold, poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma 2.0-fold and primary lung tumor 1.9-fold.

Conclusions:

histopathological diagnosis of primary tumor, poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma and primary lung tumor influence mortality in patients with metastases of cancer of unknown origin.

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