Morphological and morphometric studies of the human obstructed, trabeculated urinary bladder.

As part of an ongoing study on trabeculation of the human urinary bladder, morphological and morphometric techniques have been employed on biopsy samples of detrusor muscle removed from control and urodynamically obstructed patients. In control material the mean profile area, profile diameter and nucleated profile percentage of bladder smooth muscle cells were determined. The values of the same parameters were obtained for smooth muscle cells in samples from urodynamically obstructed and endoscopically trabeculated patients. Comparison of the results obtained from the two groups showed that smooth muscle cells undergo compensatory hypertrophy in response to outflow obstruction. Furthermore, connective tissue infiltration of detrusor muscle bundles is a characteristic of those bladders which possess cells showing the largest increase in cell size.