The Value of Excretory Urography as a Screening Test in Asymptomatic Patients

Associated anomalies in undescended testes

“…Table 3 illustrates that in 658 patients 2.5% had major urinary tract malformations and 9.4% minor abnormalities. In the general population developmental abnormalities of the kidney and urinary tract are present in about 10% of people, but the prevalence of major urinary tract malformations is less than 2% [10].…”

Excretory urography in evaluation of the surgical cancer patient

“…Unsuspected primary tumors can be detected by excretory urography, although the incidence is very low. In 558 patients, (Leary et al, 1972) found 1 renal carcinoma and 2 ovarian carcinomas. (Prager et al, 1973) found 1 renal and 1 bladder carcinoma in 180 patients.…”

“…Excretory urography provides partial examination of the retroperitoneum by outlining the renal excretory system. It has been used with variable success for the detection of occult primary and metastatic malignancies (Baum et al, 1963;Leary et al, 1972). Since patients undergoing intravenous urography have a small but significant incidence of toxic reaction and since the procedure is relatively expensive and time consuming (Witten et al, 1973), its value in the staging of cancer patients should be carefully defined.…”

Prostatism, Intravenous Urography and Asymptomatic Renal Cancer

“…If we limit our list of significant upper tract abnormalities to these diagnoses (including tumours), more than 4000 "normal" urograms were performed to demonstrate just 83 such abnormalities. This compares with 4 significant lesions, including 1 renal carcinoma, found in 558 urograms performed in a heterogeneous group of patients with hypertension (Leary et al, 1972). Whether this equation is cost effective is a matter of opinion.…”