UTILITY OF THE BARD BTA TEST IN DETECTING UPPER URINARY-TRACT TRANSITIONAL-CELL CARCINOMA

Objectives, The Bard BTA test has been shown in early studies to be us eful in diagnosing transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the bladder. H owever, the utility of this test has not been evaluated for TCC of the upper urinary tract. We therefore evaluated the clinical utility of t he BTA test for upper urinary TCC. Methods. We tested 71 specimens fro m the ureter and/or renal pelvis in 22 patients with a history or clin ical suspicion for TCC and 9 patients with benign disorders. Results, When compared to cytologic diagnoses, BTA had a sensitivity of 65%, a specificity of 40% (when correlated with clinical history), a false-po sitive rate of 33%, and a false-negative rate of 62%. The test had a p ositive predictive value of 83% and a negative predictive value of 32% . Conclusions. The BTA does not have any clinical value in detecting u pper urinary tract TCC. (C) 1998, Elsevier Science Inc. All rights res erved.