Despite efforts to identify highly sensitive urine-based markers that are able to better identify patients with a true risk of bladder cancer, primary evaluation still relies upon hematuria screening and urine cytology. Even in cases of abnormal cytology, assays to risk-stratify patients have yet to gain widespread clinical adoption or acceptance in professional guidelines. Workup and monitoring of patients requires unpleasant, sometimes unnecessary, invasive techniques leaving many in urology seeking better tests. Standard Tests Have Low Sensitivity Hematuria is relatively common in the general population (9 percent to 18 percent) while the prevalence of urinary tract cancers is low in the general population (0.01 percent to 3 percent), experts say, making screening for the disease difficult. Clinicians would like alternative measures that better identify patients who truly require further evaluation and those who can be spared unnecessary workup, including radiation exposure and invasive cystoscopy. “Using blood in the urine as an indicator for possible cancer when it is that common of a finding is problematic, and that is the inherent problem with bladder cancer screening,” says Ronald Loo, M.D., regional chief of urology at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in Los Angeles. “The holy grail would be a quick test […]