Computed tomography urography with corticomedullary phase can exclude urinary bladder cancer with high accuracy

BACKGROUND: To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of computed tomography-urography (CTU) to rule out urinary bladder cancer (UBC) and whether patients thereby could omit cystoscopy. METHODS: All patients evaluated for macroscopic hematuria with CTU with cortico-medullary phase (CMP) and cystoscopy at our institute between 1(st) November 2016 and 31(st) December 2019 were included. From this study cohort a study group consisting of all UBC patients and a control group of 113 patients randomly selected from all patients in the study cohort without UBC. Two radiologists blinded to all clinical data reviewed the CTUs independently. CTUs were categorized as positive, negative or indeterminate. Diagnostic accuracy and proportion of potential omittable cystoscopies were calculated for the study cohort by generalizing the results from the study group. RESULTS: The study cohort consisted of 2195 patients, 297 of which were in the study group (UBC group, n = 207 and control group, n = 90). Inter-rater reliability was high (κ 0.84). Evaluation of CTUs showed that 174 patients were assesessed as positive (showing UBC), 46 patients as indeterminate (not showing UBC but with limited quality of CTU), and 77 patients as negative (not showing UBC with good quality of CTU). False negative rate was 0.07 (95%, CI 0.04–0.12), false positive rate was 0.01 (95% CI 0.0–0.07) and negative predictive value was 0.99 (95% CI 0.92–1.0). The area under the curve was 0.93 (95% CI 0.90–0.96). Only 2.9% (3/102) with high-risk tumors and 11% (12/105) with low- or intermediate-risk tumors had a false negative CTU. Cystoscopy could potentially have been omitted in 57% (1260/2195) of all evaluations. CONCLUSIONS: CTU with CMP can exclude UBC with high accuracy. In case of negative CTU, it might be reasonable to omit cystoscopy, but future confirmative studies with possibly refined technique are needed. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12894-022-01009-4.