Urothelial Bladder Cancer Urinary Biomarkers

Urothelial bladder cancer is the fourth most prevalent male malignancy in the United States and also one of the ten most lethal. Superficial or non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer has a high rate of recurrence and can progress to muscle invasive disease. Conventional surveillance requires regular cystoscopy and is used often with urinary cytology. Unfortunately, the cystoscopy procedure is invasive for patients and costly for health care providers. Urinary biomarkers have the potential to improve bladder cancer diagnosis, the efficiency and also the cost-effectiveness of follow up. It may also be possible for urinary biomarkers to help prognosticate particularly for patients with high-grade bladder cancer who may want enhanced assessment of their risk of disease progression. In this review the important historical urinary biomarkers and the newly emerging biomarkers are discussed. As will be presented, although many of the tests have good performance characteristics, unfortunately no single test can fulfill all the roles currently provided by cystoscopy and cytology. It is likely that in the future, urinary biomarker testing will be used selectively in a personalized manner to try and improve prognostication or reduce the necessity for invasive cystoscopy in patients understanding the limits of the test.