Q:
What is hematuria and pseudohematuria?
A:
Hematuria (blood in the urine) means the presence of blood cells in the urine.
Depending on the visibility of the blood in the urine, it can be gross hematuria (visible to the naked eye) or microscopic hematuria (not visible).
Anyway, hematuria is a sign of health problems. In order to check the presence of hematuria, many tests are ordered. One of them is dipstick urine test.
A dipstick urine test, or urine test strip, is a basic tool that checks levels of the chemicals in the urine. A positive result suggests the presence of hematuria.
However, the test result can be false, due to:
- hydration,
- exercise,
- contamination of the urine sample,
- or other reasons.
Therefore, when the dipstick urine test result is positive on account of the reasons above (instead of blood in the urine), it means the result is false-positive. The situation is called pseudohematuria.
Keywords: hematuria; pseudohematuria.
