‘The Nine’ Wednesday 10 November 2021.

The programme interviewed women living with chronic UTI and raised the issues around ineffective testing and lack of treatment options. The urologist interviewed, from the University of Aberdeen, confirmed that if untreated, a urinary tract infection can become a chronic (long term) infection.

Dr Imran Omar says “If you are relying on dipstick testing and the patient has symptoms of a UTI, you cannot rule out the possibility of false negative test, in my opinion these patients need to be tested further.”

He goes on to say “If the women are having symptoms of UTI and if it’s not picked up earlier and if the diagnosis is missed they can develop chronic UTI.”

CUTIC were invited to make a statement about our main concerns and aims. These are: change to UTI laboratory testing methods in order to effectively diagnose chronic UTI; NHS recognition of chronic UTI; chronic UTI to be included in NICE and SIGN guidelines (currently these only exist for uncomplicated/acute and recurrent UTIs) and for further research into effective treatment of chronic UTI

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