Biopsy of apparently normal bladder mucosa in patients with bladder carcinoma and its prognostic importance.

A total of 100 cold cup biopsies were obtained from apparently normal vesical mucosa of 25 patients admitted to Hacettepe University Hospital between 1980 and 1981. Dysplasia was found to occur in 40.49, hyperplasia in 17.35, squamous metaplasia in 9.91 per cent. Dysplasia was shown to be increasing parallel with the increase in the grade and stage of the tumour. The frequency of dysplasia and hyperplasia in the recurrent and non-recurrent groups differed significantly (p less than 0.001). In other words, recurrence was seen more frequently in patients with positive random biopsies. Although recurrence phenomena cannot be explained on the basis of mucosal abnormalities alone, this study shows that these subendoscopic lesions do have some prognostic role in recurrences.