Median survival was 96 days with 1, 6, and 12 month survivals 78%, 30%, and 12% respectively.  They also created a multivariate model to create a sort of mortality risk index:  low albumin, low-grade hydronephrosis, and having lots of metastases all predicted worse outcomes.  Why low-grade hydronephrosis was independently associated with worse outcomes (as opposed to high-grade) I don't know and the authors don't speculate.

I'm assuming there is some body of literature out there on prognosis and outcomes with neph tube insertion, although this is the first I've seen of it, and it's certainly important data to know.  It's always tough to know how to generalize data from other countries, but looking at the demographic/patient information data in this paper, these are very familiar patients to me, and, at least as far as survival in advanced cancer goes, there's very little any of us can do anywhere that has a major impact on longevity and I plan on treating these findings as generally applicable to my patients.

Christian, as our in-house prognostication guy, I'll let you contradict me here but I think most of us conceptualize prognosis is advanced cancer in two ways: one is looking at performance status/ECOG score/etc. and the other is looking for the presence or absence of 'sentinel' indicators of poor prognosis (e.g. hypercalemia, presence of a malignant pleural effusion, etc.). I'm adding obstructive nephropathy/neph tube placement to the list as well.