A prospective study in Giresun, Türkiye, linked urinary cytology with muscle invasion among bladder tumours whose imaging was inconclusive. Tissue examination found invasion in only five of the 57 patients. This single peer-reviewed, single-centre study describes an association, with the small number of cases and absence of external validation limiting how widely its estimates apply.
Bladder-muscle invasion appeared in four of 12 patients with positive urinary cytology, compared with one of 45 whose cytology was negative. The single peer-reviewed prospective observational study followed an imaging-indeterminate group in Giresun, Türkiye. Cytology examines cells in urine. Here, its association with subsequent tissue findings supplied information within a category that magnetic-resonance imaging had left uncertain.[1]
At one centre, researchers selected 57 patients from a wider group of 241. The study began in September 2023 and ended in September 2025. All fell in the intermediate bladder-imaging category called VI-RADS 3, which expresses uncertainty about muscle invasion. Only five had invasion on pathological examination. With so few cases, adjustment for other patient characteristics was unreliable and the test-performance estimates were imprecise.[1]
Negative predictive value reached 97.8 per cent, but muscle invasion occurred in just 8.8 per cent of the group. Such predictive values depend on how common the condition is in the population tested. Sensitivity was estimated at 80 per cent, with a wide confidence interval. There was no independent validation cohort, so the observed association has not established a rule for choosing treatment.[1]
