Bladder Diseases

Urinary Symptoms with Bladder Involvement

Patient symptoms with bladder involvement include urgency (sudden need to urinate), frequency (need to urinate more frequently during the day with no increase in volume), nocturia (need to get up more than once in the night to urinate), oliguria (less-than-normal urine elimination) hesitancy (delay while bladder pressure increases to overcome sphincter resistance, straining, decreased force of urination, dribbling and dysuria (painful urination often associated with inflammation). These symptoms might be caused by increased urine output or decreased bladder capacity. The cause of increased urine output will be determined and can be secondary to other disease states like diabetes, excess fluid intake and the use of diuretics. The cause of decreased bladder capacity might be due to obstruction at the bladder neck or distally in the urethra like benign prostatic hyperplasia, of a neurogenic nature causing the bladder to have limited expansion and contraction capability or from bladder compression by conditions like tumors, pelvic mass, and pregnancy.

Diagnostic Tools used for Bladder Diseases

In addition to the history and physical examination, the physician or urologist (specialist in urinary tract health) will perform diagnostic testing to rule out, differentiate and confirm diagnosis of bladder disease.

Urinalysis can provide information indicative of various diseases not just those limited to the urinary tract. In the physician's office, the urine dipstick test will provide clues to urinary tract disease like information on the pH of the urine (possible sign of bacterial infection), detect the presence of nitrites (possible sign of bacterial infection), and detect the presence of blood. The presence of blood in urine (hematuria) indicates need for immediate and thorough evaluation, while hematuria may be a signal to test further for cancer, it is not necessarily indicative of cancer. Hematuria may be caused by infection, prostatitis, overexertion, urinary stones, and lesions. Additional testing will pinpoint the cause.

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