Transitional Cell Carcinoma of the Bladder in a 12-Year-Old Gelding

Bloody urine – the list of differential diagnoses lengthens, but diagnostics remain the same

“…A urethral rent should be suspected as the cause of haematuria of a gelding even when no rent is observed during urethroscopy, if the results of examination have eliminated all other possible sites of haemorrhage (Glass et al 2016). Urolithiasis, primary cystitis (Fig 2) (Smith et al 2016), mucosal ulceration associated with chronic administration of a NSAID (Aleman et al 2011), exercise-induced mucosal erosions in the bladder (Schott 2002), cystic neoplasia (Fischer et al 1985;Patterson-Kane et al 2000;Hurcombe et al 2008;Serena et al 2009;Busechian et al 2016) and polypoid cystitis (Rosales et al 2019) can be identified during cystoscopy. Immunohistochemical examination of endoscopically obtained tissue from a cystic carcinoma can identify whether the neoplastic cells express COX-2 receptors, thereby determining if treating the horse with a COX-2 selective NSAID might be effective (Lisowski et al 2015;Busechian et al 2016).…”