Can Dipstick Screening for Hematuria Identify Individuals with Structural Renal Abnormalities? A Sonographic Evaluation

Abstract

The present study presents data from a population study of 659 randomly selected adult volunteers. All participants had a renal sonographic examination and at the same time had their urine tested for hematuria by dipstick. Thirty participants (5%) had dipstick hematuria. Similar rates of abnormal renal findings were obtained in the hematuria-positive and hematuria-negative groups, 10% and 8%, respectively. Our results suggest that dipstick investigation for hematuria in mass-screening programs is not effective for the detection of structural renal abnormalities.