The FYI on UTIs: All you need to know to treat and prevent urinary tract infections | GMA Digital

Hello, welcome to my doctor's office, today we are talking about UTIs or

urinary

tract

infections

. I will tell you that the most important thing to

know

about UTIs is that even some doctors and healthcare providers don't

know

that UTI is an abbreviation. for

urinary

tract

infections

some people call them bladder infections they are incredibly common more than 50% of women will have one at some point in their lives men get them children get them babies get them it is when there is some type of infection usually bacterial but in some cases it could even be caused by a fungus, although it is much rarer, it reaches the bladder in many cases it can produce symptoms, but not in all cases we see them in all age groups, sometimes one, sometimes They are isolated in a woman or an adolescent. and sometimes they can be chronic or recurrent.

The basic symptoms of a UTI include urinary urgency, so you feel like you have to go to the bathroom, burning or pain during urination or urination and urinary frequency, sometimes there may be associated sensations of fatigue or pelvic kram, sometimes radiating penis . towards the back and then in rare cases, if this infection spreads from the bladder to the kidneys, it can cause something called pyelonephritis, which is an infection in the kidney. The first thing you should do is take a liter of water and start drinking it if you decide to get

treat

ment and it has been administered to you by an urgent care provider or an emergency room provider or even your regular healthcare provider.

You want to ask if this is the right antibiotic and again remember the gold standard or fosfomycin or bactrim. Are you taking the antibiotic? The right antibiotic and the right dose for the right period. It is generally not necessary to

treat

for a full seven days or 10 days in uncomplicated urinary tract infections, so three or five days are generally sufficient in most cases. Three of my top three things about UT is that I want patients. and everyone watching and listening knows that antibiotic treatment is not always necessary when bacteria are found in urine. We know that 40 to 50 percent of urinary tract infections will go away on their own without any antibiotics.

That being said, the symptoms can be really unpleasant and really uncomfortable, you know, we want to encourage people not to self-diagnose, not to self-treat or self-medicate, but to work with a healthcare provider so they can help you decide if treatment is necessary and If so, what is the appropriate treatment. Each antibiotic is appropriate for a urinary tract infection. I can't tell you how many times I've had patients say I started having symptoms. I googled UTI and just took amoxicillin, zithromax or z-pak that I had in my bathroom. It is the wrong thing to do and, if possible, can do more harm than good.

It is really important to do a urine culture. Many people go to urgent care centers or get into the box with symptoms and do what is called a urine microscopy and what This is an easy test to perform on a urine sample that can give us clues as to whether the person has a urinary tract infection or an infection. We obtain all this information in seconds, but it is not a urine culture, so if you go to an urgent center. Be careful and they analyze your urine and they leave a room five seconds later and they say it looks like you have an infection, that is this test that is not a urine culture, a urine culture takes about five days to grow in a laboratory and that will tell you Tell us which one is the organism and which abaya pets are appropriate for that organism.

It's very important to try to get that urine culture because if your symptoms go away and then come back and you have to be treated again, we really

need

to know what bacteria you have. was that what caused the infection, there's no shame in this game, everyone urinates, everyone has a bladder and most people have sex, so if sex is what triggered your UTI I'd say be loud and proud That's how you got it, but there are some ways. to

prevent

it in the future number one we have a saying in medicine and surgery the secret to pollution is dilution what does that mean that bacteria when irrigated or flooded have less chance of thriving, multiplying and surviving?

You talk about your bladder, that means drinking a lot of water. Things that are more sugary are generally not good for your body in general. They can certainly irritate your bladder as well, so just water, pee or empty your bladder before and immediately after sex and again, that's kind of the thing. eliminate any bacteria and the other really important behavioral tip is that you can take any moistened wipe or wet toilet paper or take a shower or a bath and just make sure that the perineum, which is the whole area from the urethra, the vagina and the rectum, be as clean as possible before having sex, we must remember that when you talk about bacteria, you are often referring to microscopic things that you can't see, so if you have defecated earlier in the day, you will have intercourse sexual later, believe me when I tell you that if you took a culture of the area around the rectum at 100%, you would detect ecoli bacteria.

Cranberry juice myth or reality. Actually, it is a fact. There is actually an elucidated mechanism, so we have an explanation of why and how blueberry may work. reduce your risks and it has to do with bacteria adhering to the bladder wall and cranberry juice in some ways actually inhibits that doesn't mean it will work for everyone and the data seems to suggest that it is more effective as a

prevent

ative measure than as a treatment once someone already has symptoms.