Blog

Pet of the Year Finalist: Red urine diagnosed by scans

Being Veterinary surgeons we get to deal with both pleasant experiences, like playing with puppies/kittens/bunnies, and in some cases unpleasant experiences such as smelly bodily excretions.

It is not unusual for us therefore to have to examine your pets faeces or urine to give us a clue as to what might be causing them to be poorly. In this case it was the latter. Thomas was brought to the Wells Practice as his owner had noted his urine seemed to have blood present. He was urinating fairly normally and not straining to go, but a photo confirmed the issue.

The most common reasons for this are generally infections, bladder stones or unfortunately tumours in our older patients. Often infections can be predisposed to by underlying diseases such as kidney/liver disease, diabetes etc… Additionally in cats, bloody urine can also be linked to stress alone and not to any of the previous conditions. The best way to determine the cause is to perform both a general blood check and a bladder scan.

Thomas had blood work done around 6 months previously and this was all Ok, so we opted to go straight for the scan. Being a male with no apparent underlying organ issues, an infection is much less likely than in females so we were therefore suspicious of either a stone or tumours. A bladder scan allows us to detect abnormalities within the urogenital tract, and unfortunately in Thomas’s case, a suspicious looking area of tissue was seen in the bladder consistent with a bladder tumour. There were however treatment options. It is possible to remove large portions of the bladder (up to 70%) and still retain normal bladder function.

Luckily for Thomas the tumour was located at the apex of the bladder (see diagram), which is the area where removal is possible. At the other end, where it transitions into the urethra it is far more difficult to operate given the narrowing of the bladder at this point and possible urethral involvement.After a discussion of with the owner about the various pros and cons, we opted to go for surgery. The bladder was re-scanned prior to surgery to further confirm the presence of abnormal bladder tissue and a full body x-ray was taken to assess for signs of any tumour spread. The x-ray came back clear as did the blood profile run before the operation.

A tumour was subsequently found at the bladder apex and removed. The surgery went well and Thomas recovered uneventfully. During the following week he had a few hiccups along the way, developing a short period of constipation and a temperature, but both were dealt with and resolved. He is now back to urinating normally with no blood present and back to his old self. The lab report requested following the tumour removal suggested it was an aggressive tumour type that had potentially invaded into nearby blood vessels so it was certaintly better out than in. The lab report means there is a chance it had already spread before we managed to get in and remove it, but not necessarily.

Regardless, Thomas doesn’t seem too bothered by the news. Whilst chemotherapy treatments are an option in such cases we have decided to keep him on long term loxicom, which itself is likely to have an anti-cancer effect for such bladder tumours. We are keeping our fingers crossed that Thomas has a good time ahead of him, and that the tumour doesn’t recur.