role of urinary cytology in the early diagnosis of bladder cancer

ABSTRACT

A prospective study was conducted on 50 patients with urinary bladder carcinoma to evaluate the role of urinary cytology in the early diagnosis of bladder cancer. Urinary cytology was clearly positive in 87.5% and negative in 12.5% of cases when bladder tumour was visible on cystoscopic examination. Whereas it was clearly positive in 40% and negative in 60% of cases when no tumour was seen on cystoscopy but detected on biopsy. It was observed that urinary cytology is almost as accurate as cystoscopy in appraising the presence or absence of bladder tumour. It may provide information about the neoplastic state of the epithelium not provided by cystoscopic examination. It is recommended that being practical and simple procedure, urinary cytology may be done as a routine procedure in the high risk patients and also suspected cases of bladder carcinoma presenting with unexplained frequency, urgency or haematuria