Is Frequent Urination a Sign of Cancer?

This page is for anyone peeing more often than usual who wonders about cancer. It covers the urgent signs, the common causes, and what bladder and prostate cancer symptoms look like.

Going more often is common and usually dull. Blood in your pee is not.

MedlinePlus says never to ignore blood you see in your urine, and to get checked by your provider. Call your primary care doctor promptly. The NHS spells out that this holds even if you have no other symptoms, it is the first time it has happened, there is only a small amount, or you are not sure it is blood.

MedlinePlus says to contact your provider right away if the blood comes with fever, chills, nausea or vomiting, pain in your belly, side or back, blood clots in your urine, or being unable to pee.

It describes the color as bright pink, red or dark brown. It also says blood in pee is not usually caused by anything serious, but must be checked, because it can be a sign of cancer.

One episode counts. A second one that never came does not cancel the first.

The NHS pairs urinary symptoms with likely causes.

Burning when you pee, needing to go often, smelly or cloudy pee, a high temperature and pain in the sides or lower back point to a urinary tract infection. Bad pain in the sides, lower back or groin that comes and goes, with feeling sick and being unable to lie still, points to kidney stones. Older men who find it hard to start, need to go suddenly and often, and wake in the night usually have an enlarged prostate.

Diabetes, pregnancy, caffeine, alcohol and water tablets (diuretics) all increase how often you go. So does an overactive bladder.

The NHS also notes that pee can look wrong for harmless reasons. Beetroot turns it pink. Some medicines turn it red or brown. Bleeding from the back passage or a period can be mistaken for it.

NCI says the most common symptom of bladder cancer is blood in the urine, often slightly rusty to bright red. It notes the blood can appear once and then not return for a while, and that sometimes there is too little to see. Its other common symptoms are frequent urination, pain or burning when urinating, feeling you need to go when the bladder is not full, and urinating often at night.

For prostate cancer, NCI lists trouble starting the flow, frequent urination especially at night, trouble emptying the bladder completely, and a weak or stop-and-go stream. It adds an important caveat: as men age the prostate may enlarge and block the flow, and that condition is not cancer, though it causes the same symptoms.

This combination gets mis-sorted online, so it is worth being exact.

For anyone, the NHS treats back pain with any of these as an emergency: pain, tingling, weakness or numbness in both legs, a loss of feeling around your genitals or anus, or changes in your bladder or bowels such as difficulty peeing or wetting yourself. In the US, that means calling 911 or going to the emergency room.

For someone who has cancer, the American Cancer Society says cancer in the spine can press on the spinal cord, and that this is an emergency. It lists back pain (sometimes going down one or both legs), numbness of the legs or belly, leg weakness, and loss of control of urine or stool or trouble passing urine. If you notice symptoms like these, it says to call your doctor right away or go to the emergency room.

Keep those numbers where you can find them at night.

Being unable to pass any urine, with a painful swollen lower belly, is not something to sit out. MedlinePlus lists being unable to pass urine among the things to contact a provider about straight away. The bladder has to be drained, so go to the emergency room (ER) if you cannot be seen within a few hours.

Sepsis can start from a urine infection too. The CDC calls it a life-threatening medical emergency and lists these signs: confusion, shortness of breath, a high heart rate or weak pulse, fever, shivering or feeling very cold, extreme pain, and clammy or sweaty skin. Those mean calling 911 or going to the emergency room.

A bladder diary answers most of what a primary care doctor will ask.

Note:

• how many times you go by day and by night, and roughly how much
• what you drank and when
• whether there was burning or urgency
• whether the color changed
• your medicines

Take it with you. When Should I Worry About a Symptom? explains how that pattern gets read.

• NHS — Blood in urine
• NHS — Back pain
• MedlinePlus — Blood in urine
• CDC — About Sepsis
• American Cancer Society — Bone Metastases
• MedlinePlus — Urination, difficulty with flow
• National Cancer Institute — Bladder Cancer Symptoms
• National Cancer Institute — Prostate Cancer Treatment (PDQ)