[Clinical study of urinary cytology: with special reference to bladder cancer]

During the last 66 months, 482 urinary cytologic examinations were performed on 160 inpatients suspected of having genitourinary cancer at our University Hospital. Cytologic diagnosis was done according to the Papanicolaou's classification. The cytologic findings were compared by size, shape, numbers of the tumor and the histologic findings. The positive rate (classes IV and V) was 56.7% (90 patients) in bladder cancer, 22.2% (18 patients) in prostatic cancer, 13.3% (15 patients) in renal cancer and 62.5% (8 patients) in renal pelvic or ureteral cancer. There was no false positive case for benign disease. The positive rate of cytologic examinations for stage A bladder cancer was statistically lower than that for stage B, C and D cancers. There were no statistically significant differences among the stage B, C and D groups. The positive rate in the low grade (grade I and II) bladder cancer was statistically lower than that of high grade (grade III and IV) cancer. In the small tumor less than thumbtip -sized, cytological diagnosis was positive in 40.0%, while in the large tumor larger than this size, the positive rate was 73.3%. The difference between these two groups was statistically significant. The positive rate in the non-recurrent cases of the bladder cancer was 64.5%, while that in the recurrent cancer cases was 39.3%. The difference between these two groups was statistically significant. The positive rate of urinary cytology did not correspond to the shape or number of tumors. It is desirable to perform cytology more than 3 times on the same patient.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)