Your body uses food and drink to fuel cells and provide nutrients to tissue and organs, but it doesn’t use everything you put into it. Once food has been broken down and processed elsewhere in your digestive system, your urinary system is vital for filtering blood and removing waste from the body in the form of urine.
A number of possible problems can affect any part of your urinary system, such as bladder cancer, kidney disease, urinary incontinence, and urinary tract infections (UTI). Hematuria, or blood in your urine, is a possible symptom of these or other urinary conditions, but how much should it concern you? To find out, let’s examine the symptoms of hematuria, its causes, and reasons for possible concern.
Residents of the Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach and South Florida areas looking for explanations for hematuria and other urinary concerns can find help with Drs. Craig Herman and Steven Kester and the skilled medical staff at Urology Center of Florida.
Blood can be present in your urine in such small quantities that you can’t even see it, which is called microscopic hematuria, which would require a urine screening to identify. If there’s enough present to be visible, however (called gross hematuria), you can expect to see pink-, red-, or soda-colored urine while going to the bathroom. It doesn’t take a lot of blood to be visible, and usually it’s not painful. Blood clots in urine can be painful, and hematuria often shows without other symptoms.
The blood can come from problems present in any part of the urinary tract, resulting from conditions like UTIs, kidney stones, bladder stones, benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH, or enlarged prostate), prostate cancer, bladder cancer, injury, and some medications. If you’ve had to use a catheter recently, hematuria may also be present. Strenuous exercise can also lead to blood in the urine through bladder trauma, dehydration, or the breakdown of red blood cells during intense physical activity.
Hematuria is more a symptom than a condition, as it can be caused by so many different conditions. If you have blood in your urine, you should definitely get it checked out, but how serious the problem is will depend on the cause. Other symptoms aside from the blood, such as foul-smelling or cloudy urine, burning urination, fever, abdominal pain, back pain, or nausea and vomiting, are also indicators of concern.
Gross hematuria can be a sign of several types of cancer (bladder, prostate, or kidney), but if detected early it can be treated easily. If infection or inflammation is involved, it can be managed with medications. But unless you’re dealing with an advanced condition, the prognosis for treatment is positive.
So, concern for hematuria is to be expected, but most conditions connected to it are treatable, especially if caught early. To get it checked out as soon as possible, make an appointment with Urology Center of Florida today to find out what’s going on and how to get it treated.
