What is cystoscopy?
Cystoscopy is an office procedure used for diagnosis of various bladder and urethra conditions, and to answer certain clinical questions for people who have more extreme cases of incontinence. In this procedure, we fill the patient’s bladder with fluid, which our doctor examines through a telescope in only a few minutes.
We use cystoscopy to examine the lining of your bladder and the tube that carries urine out of your body (this is the urethra). We insert a hollow tube (cystoscope) equipped with a lens into your urethra and slowly advance the tube into your bladder. We can do this procedure in a testing room, using a local anesthetic jelly to numb the urethra. We might also perform cystoscopy as an outpatient procedure, with sedation. Another option is to have cystoscopy performed in the hospital under general anesthesia. Where you go depends on the reason for your procedure. We might recommend cystoscopy to:
- Investigate causes of symptoms including blood in the urine, incontinence, overactive bladder and painful urination. Cystoscopy can also help our doctors determine the cause of frequent urinary tract infections (UTIs). However, we generally do not perform cystoscopy while you have an active UTI.
- Diagnose bladder conditions such as bladder cancer, bladder stones and bladder inflammation (cystitis).
- Treat bladder diseases using special tools can be passed through the cystoscope to treat certain conditions such as very small bladder tumors, which we might remove during cystoscopy.
- Diagnose an enlarged prostate by revealing a narrowing of the urethra where it passes through the prostate gland, indicating an enlarged prostate (this condition is known as benign prostatic hypertrophy or BPH).
- Discover compassionate urology care at Wisconsin Institute of Urology. Call us at 920-886-8979 or toll-free at 877-897-7747, or use our convenient Request an Appointment form. Our cystoscopy patients come to us from Appleton, Neenah, Oshkosh, Waupaca, Shawano, New London, Ripon, Fond du Lac and surrounding areas.
