- With Mayo Clinic urologist
Erik Castle, M.D.
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Erik Castle, M.D.
Erik Castle, M.D.
Dr. Erik Castle is a board-certified urologist who joined the Mayo Clinic staff in Arizona in 2007.
Dr. Castle is an associate professor of urology at College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, and a senior associate consultant in the Department of Urology, where he also is assistant residency coordinator.
He was an assistant professor in the Department of Urology at Tulane University in New Orleans from 2004 to 2006 after serving as a clinical instructor/fellow at Mayo Clinic in Arizona for one year.
Dr. Castle's research interests include prostate cancer, bladder cancer and kidney cancer. He is the director of the Desert Mountain Prostate Cancer Research Fund and is the principal investigator of Castle labs housed at the Samuel C. Johnson Medical Research building at Mayo Clinic in Arizona. His basic science research is focused on novel secondary hormonal therapies of prostate cancer as well as genomics of prostate and bladder cancer.
His surgical expertise includes laparoscopic urology, robot-assisted radical prostatectomy with nerve sparing, robot-assisted radical cystectomy with neobladder, robot-assisted retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, robot-assisted partial nephrectomy and other robotic urologic oncology procedures. He has performed many of these procedures as demonstrations internationally. He is a member of the American Association of Clinical Urologists, the American Urological Association, the Endourological Society, and the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons. He is president of the international Society of Urologic Robotic Surgeons. He is also the director of the international laparoscopic nephrectomy courses throughout Mexico on behalf of the American Urologic Association.
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Question
Urine cytology test: What does it tell my doctor?
My doctor ordered a urine cytology test for me. What is this for?
Answer
from Erik Castle, M.D.
A urine cytology is a test used to help detect cancer of the urinary tract system, including cancer of the bladder, urethra, ureters and kidneys.
For a urine cytology test, you provide a urine sample. When you urinate, cells that line your urinary tract naturally come out in your urine. A lab technician will process the urine to retrieve any normal and, if present, abnormal cells and prepare them for analysis under a microscope. A trained pathologist will then examine the specimen to look for cancer cells.
The results of urine cytology are not 100 percent accurate — sometimes no cancer cells are seen when cancer is present (false-negative), and sometimes cells are thought to be cancerous when no cancer is present (false-positive). Even when cancer cells are detected, a cancer diagnosis must be confirmed by other diagnostic tests, such as blood tests or a biopsy. If a cancer diagnosis is made, these additional tests can also help your doctor pinpoint the cancer's location and formulate a treatment plan.
