Everything You Need to Know About Urinary Tract Infection
8,868 viewsThe urinary tract infection (UTI) is a leading cause of consultation in medical practice, second only to respiratory infections. It is therefore important to define and characterize urinary infection and explain the terms used by doctors, which is covered in this first article.
What is urinary tract infection - uti?
The UTI is the presence of some microorganisms in the urinary tract. When it comes to the kidney, called pyelonephritis, bladder, cystitis, prostate, prostatitis and urethral, urethritis.
Most of the UTI is caused by bacteria, but can also be caused by viruses, fungi and other microorganisms. Most urinary tract infections occurs by the invasion of some bacteria of intestinal bacterial flora in the urinary tract. The bacterium Escherichia coli, representing 80-95% of urinary tract infectious invaders.
Sometimes the patient has symptoms similar to UTI, such as pain, burning, urgency to urinate and increased frequency, but culture tests show no bacteria in the urine.
These cases can be confused with UTI and are called acute urethral syndrome, which may have other non-infectious causes, but of inflammatory origin, such as chemical, toxic, hormonal and radiation.
The access of microbes to the urinary tract occurs via ascending, or the urethra and can be installed in the urethra and prostate, advancing to the bladder, and with more difficulty, to the kidney.
Hardly, the bacteria can enter the urinary tract through blood. This occurs only when there is widespread infection (septicemia) or in patients without immune defenses as AIDS and transplant recipients. The intensity of the UTI depends on the patient’s defenses, the virulence of the organism and the ability to adhere to the wall of the urinary tract.
Since urine is sterile, there are factors that facilitate infection of the urinary tract, such as:
urinary blockage, enlarged prostate, urethral stenosis, congenital defects and other
foreign bodies: catheters, calculi (kidney stones), introduction of objects into the urethra (children)
neurological diseases: column injury, neurogenic bladder Diabetes
genito-urinary fistulas and digestive tract, and constipated colostomists
sexually transmitted diseases and gynecological infections.
The prophylactic and therapeutic guidelines of facilitating factors can be seen in the articles on cystitis, pyelonephritis and urinary tract infection in children and pregnant.
What do you feel - symptoms?
The urination is voluntary and painless. The presence of:
pain
burning
difficulty and / or urgent urination
very frequent urinary voiding and small volume
with urine odor, color opaque
with strands of mucus
form a data set that allows the physician to suspect the patient has urinary tract infection. Often these are in addition to signs and symptoms and pain in the bladder at the end of urination, dripping of small amounts of blood.
When the kidney is reached, the patient, in addition to the above symptoms, chills, fever and back pain, and may sometimes occur abdominal cramps, nausea and vomiting.
How is UTI diagnosed?
The presence of signs and symptoms of UTI requires the doctor to order a standard urine test and a urine culture. Therefore, it is very important that the collection of a urine sample is carried out without contamination. The contamination is generally of microorganisms from the urethra, perianal region and sometimes cough or hands handling the sterilized jars.
There are four methods of collection: average urine stream, urine collector, probing and puncturing the bladder. Each method has its indications, complications and conveniences. The physician must decide which is best for your patient.
Most of the collections is made by the midstream first morning urine, after a well-made cleaning of the periurethral region. The midstream urine is collected after the jet has been overlooked the first portion of urine, which could be contaminated by microorganisms of the urethra.
The standard urine test, in the case of UTI, has lots of bacteria and leukocytes (white blood cells), predominantly on erythrocytes (RBC) in urine sediment.
The culture examination of urine in the UTI shows a growth of bacteria more than 100,000 germs per milliliter of urine. This amount of bacteria allows the diagnosis of urinary incontinence in 95% of cases, since there was no contamination. Sometimes, in certain situations, a smaller number of bacteria also can mean UTI.
It’s always good to remember that urine is sterile and should not have bacteria.