For those of you who did not read the entire four pages on the medscape link I sent here is something at the end of the four pages that tells that cancer in other parts of the body were detected through the fish test. EERIE I ciopied and pasted it below. Rosie
Worthy of mention is that although UroVysion was initially approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only for bladder tumor surveillance, it was recently granted FDA approval to be used as a bladder cancer screening tool in patients with hematuria.[17] There were 113 such patients identified during this study who were excluded because the focus was on surveillance patients only. These 113 patients had no history of UC but did undergo UroVysion FISH owing to various complaints such as hematuria, painful urination, urinary incontinence, and/or frequency. Of these patients, 31 had FISH-positive results; of the 31, 17 had newly diagnosed bladder carcinoma. The estimated sensitivity and specificity of UroVysion FISH in this screening setting were 62% (95% CI, 32%-85%) and 77% (95% CI, 67%-85%), respectively, which is similar to the 67% to 68% sensitivity and 78% to 80% specificity reported in the multi-institutional trial leading to the FDA approval of this assay as a hematuria screening tool
Another notable finding is that a positive UroVysion FISH result can be observed with non-UCs. In our experience, we have observed positive UroVysion FISH results in 2 bladder primary adenocarcinomas, 2 bladder primary small cell carcinomas, 1 bladder primary squamous cell carcinoma, 1 rectal adenocarcinoma invading the urinary tract, and 1 renal cell carcinoma that invaded the renal collecting system. Although no controlled studies have been performed, this observation suggests that UroVysion could detect other carcinomas that can shed malignant cells into urine. In fact, aneusomy of chromosomes 3, 7, and/or 17 has been reported in other histologic types of bladder cancer, prostatic adenocarcinoma, colonic adenocarcinoma, and renal cell carcinoma.
UroVysion FISH is an excellent adjunct to ThinPrep-based urine cytology, with the capacity to detect recurrent UC before cystoscopically visible lesions can be identified and to resolve equivocal cytologic findings. Furthermore, 26% of cystoscopically negative patients under surveillance for recurrent UC had a positive UroVysion FISH result, and in approximately 65% of these patients, recurrent UC developed within 29 months. However, caution in relying on negative FISH results must be exercised in patients with involvement of the upper urogenital tract and with certain rare variants of UC that may not shed diagnostic tumor cells and, therefore, may escape detection.