What You Should Know About Urinary Tract Infections
What You Should Know About Urinary Tract Infections
Whether this is your first urinary tract infection or your thirtieth one, you probably have a lot of questions as to why this condition is happening to you. You probably want to know what the difference is between a simple urinary tract infection, a complicated urinary tract infection, chronic UTIs, painful bladder system and interstitial cystitis. If you have questions about these things, then this is the article for you. You want answers about how you got this and what, if any, treatments there are to make yourself better. Nothing is more annoying than the frequency of urination, urgency and burning on urination so common to all of the above conditions.
First, you need to know a little bit about the anatomy of the urinary tract infections. The urine is first filtered through two kidneys, located on either side of the back of the abdomen, just above the small of the back. Urine is drained from the bladder through a pair of ureters that travel through the abdomen and pelvis until they reach the bladder, a triangular, thin walled sac, located in front of the female uterus and in front of the man's pelvis. In the man, the urethra is about seven inches long. It drains urine from the bladder to the outside. In males, the urethra passes through the prostate gland, which can become enlarged and can impact bladder infections. In females, the urethra is 1-2 inches longmuch shorter than in maleswhich is why females get bladder infections more frequently than men.
Secondly, you need to know the difference between these types of infections:
A simple urinary tract infection involves bacteria and white blood cells (an infection) in the bladder and urethra only. The kidneys are not involved and the infection usually does not produce much of a fever.
A complicated urinary infection involves an infection that has spread to the kidneys so that the kidneys, the ureters, the bladder and the urethra are involved. There can be a high fever, especially if the bacteria pass from the kidneys to the bloodstream in a condition called Gram negative sepsis. A complicated urinary tract infection can also be an infection in which there is a structural abnormality of the urinary tract such as a horse shoe kidney or a double ureter.
Chronic urinary tract infections occur when an infection doesn't clear with antibiotics and persists longer than a few days. The antibiotics can kill off the most sensitive bacteria, leaving the more dangerous and resistant bacteria to take their place. This makes the secondary bladder infection all that much more difficult to take care of.
Painful bladder syndrome occurs when a person has pain in the bladder but does not have all the symptoms necessary to call it a bladder infection nor does it have all the symptoms present in cases of interstitial cystitis. It can be said that it's similar to a case of interstitial cystitis but without all of the criteria for the condition.
Interstitial cystitis is a condition in which the urine is sterile for infection but the individual has all the symptoms of a bladder infection. It is a condition that has no known cause but that is every bit as annoying as a real bladder infection.
Above represents the spectrum of urinary tract infections and you may be suffering from any one of them. For this reason, we will talk about every one of these conditions, including their symptoms, diagnosis of these diseases and the treatment of urinary tract infections and interstitial cystitis, both home therapies and doctors' treatments. You will learn how to manage these conditions, including how to prevent them from happening in the first place.
Important points to remember:
1. The urinary tract system includes the kidneys, the ureters, the bladder and the urethra.
2. There are several different kinds of urinary conditions, some of which are infectious and others that are not based upon having an infection.
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