Causes of blood in the urine (haematuria)
Further to my article on reading urine colour, I felt like I should explore the important clinical sign of haematuria (blood in the urine) in more detail. This can be frightening for a patient to experience, and clinically important to detect early.
Haematuria may be macroscopic (visible to the naked eye), or microscopic (invisible to the eye but detectable on a test). Doctors divide causes anatomically, into pre-renal, renal, and post-renal (before, at, and after the kidneys). Let's explore these visually:
Here's some close up shots of the illustrations for those using smaller screens:
In Conclusion,
I felt this symptom was best covered visually, and so poured my heart into illustrating what's normally conveyed as a bullet point list, or blocks of prose. Follow and subscribe to artibiotics to catch more in my medical mentalism series on the art of health deduction.