Hematospermia is rarely related to genitourinary cancer: lessons learned from 15 years of experience with 342 cases

Abstract

We investigated the prevalence of hematospermia among the 161,258 men with ≥18 years old, presenting to outpatient clinics with urologic complaints, between January 2003 and December 2017. We also recorded underlying causes of hematospermia to determine frequency of genitourinary cancer in 342 men who presented with hematospermia. Further evaluations such as urine/semen culture, Meares–Stamey four glass test, transrectal/scrotal ultrasound, pelvic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), cystourethroscopy, and prostate biopsy were performed in the presence of additional symptoms and findings or recurrence of hematospermia after treatment of patients with monosymptomatic hematospermia. The prevalence of hematospermia was detected as 0.21% (342/161,258) among the urological patients. The mean age of the patients was 45.05 ± 14.04 years (range 18–85), and the median duration of hematospermia was 15 days (range 1–7200). In 306 (89.5%) of the patients, hematospermia was resolved after medical therapy for infections/inflammations, surgery for ductal obstruction and cysts, prostate and testicular cancer. However, 36 (10.5%) had persistent hematospermia. The most relevant etiologic cause of hematospermia was inflammation/infections in 169 patients (49.4%), and genitourinary cancers were detected in only 11 patients (3.2%) as prostate cancer in 8 and testicular cancer in 3. Hematospermia is seen frequently due to inflammatory or infectious causes, and is rarely associated with genitourinary cancer. However, genitourinary cancers should be kept in mind in the differential diagnosis of patients with recurrent/persistent hematospermia and associated symptoms, such as hematuria, lower urinary tract symptom, and scrotal pain/swelling.