By the time doctors measured it, a Chinese man's bladder was full at just 28 milliliters. That is less than an ounce, or about 2 tablespoons. Early in his illness, he was getting up more than 10 times a night, and at one point he needed to urinate every 5 to 8 minutes.
His bladder was dotted with small, tumor-like growths, and for more than a year doctors pursued other explanations, including tuberculosis. The growths turned out to be a benign condition called nephrogenic adenoma. By then, though, his bladder had stiffened and shrunk so badly that surgeons removed it and built him a new one from his own intestine. Urologists at Ningbo Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine in Zhejiang province described the case Sept. 9 in Frontiers in Medicine.
