Blood in Urine – Types

Transcript

There are two types of hematuria or blood in the urine. The first is a kind that can only be seen under the microscope. The urine looks perfectly normal to the naked eye, but under the microscope, red blood cells are visible. The second is visible blood. We call that gross hematuria, that can come in various forms, the urine might be slightly pink tinged or actually red, blood colored or any shade in between, or the patient may notice passage of blood clots. In either case a further workup is necessary to determine if there is a troublesome cause of blood in the urine anywhere in the urinary tract in particular. Doctors want to make sure that there are no cancers of the urinary tract. There’s a lot of different places to search, from the kidney to the urine chamber next to the kidney, the ureter tube that travels down from the kidney to the bladder, the bladder itself, the urethra, the prostate in men. There’s a lot of different locations and so the workup needs to cover all bases.