When your UTI came back

Almost 100 of you completed our second survey about the recurrence of your symptoms. Thank you so much for taking the time to do so. We are using this valuable information to inform our work. Here are the results…

We are asked:

When did your UTI symptoms reoccur?

• 35% they never stopped
• 44% came back within a month
• 14% within six months.

When the UTI didn’t go away or came back 88% went back to the GP straight away.

Of those who went back to the GP

• About 80% had their urine checked
• 62% had their sample sent off to microbiology lab
• 69% had antibiotics prescribed before the results came back
• Only 28% had their urine sample results explained to them.
• 32% were told their results were negative.

Find out more about why false negative results can happen.

• 38% found their GP sympathetic
• But about half (49%) did not.

See our GP guide for chronic UTI.

Of those who didn’t go back to their GP

• About 1/3 (32%) used self management techniques
• 16% saw a natural health practitioner
• Half didn’t get better.

Key findings

Early intervention is key to saving lives and the NHS money

This survey asked people with chronic UTI about when their infection came back. Over 1/3 said their first infection never got better. Another 44% said their symptoms returned within a month.

We know early intervention and correct treatment is key to preventing chronic UTI develop. For well over ¾ of people the first month after their first UTI is crucial.

Improving tests for UTI

Interestingly for ongoing symptoms, a higher percentage of samples were sent to the laboratory for analysis than when patients visited their GP for their initial infection and this second survey showed a higher number of samples were returned as being negative for infection. See Your first UTI survey findings for more details.

Yet again this calls into question the issues of the urine analysis despite the patient showing ongoing symptoms.
Find out more about issues with UTI testing.