Doctors ‘dismiss’ women in UTI misery

WOMEN suffering from ‘life-wrecking’ urinary tract infections (UTIs) are being ‘dismissed and mistreated’ by doctors who are cautious about prescribing powerful antibiotics, says a consultant running a specialist NHS clinic for the condition.

Half of all women will experience a UTI at some point, with many having repeated bouts. Half of women over 55 and a third of younger women report a recurrence within one year.

While many infections resolve without treatment, antibiotics are often required – typically for three days, and then for a further 14 if symptoms persist.

Consultant urologist Professor James Malone Lee, who runs Lower Urinary Tract Service as part of The Whittington NHS Trust in North London, believes the doses often are too low and given for too short a time.

His team is to publish reports of 1,000 patients who had treatment with two highdose antibiotics, hoping to demonstrate ‘an improvement on the current failure rate with hard-to-treat cases’.

Prof Malone Lee said: ‘UTIs can be dismissed as minor when for a lot of women they cause misery, wrecking personal lives.

‘Women are treated [with a short course of low-dose antibiotics] and when they go back with the same symptoms, a urine test is done and they are made to believe they are cured. However, the urine test is notoriously inaccurate.

‘Everyone has become so very worried by antibiotic resistance when in fact they are not being prescribed for long enough. The main risk of long-term, high-dose treatment is nausea, diarrhoea and more serious stomach infections, but this is outweighed by the benefits.’

Cathy Finis, a 38-year-old former hospital doctor, spent 15 months in hospital due to repeat serious UTIs. She said: ‘My UTIs started in my 20s, and like a lot of women I got short courses of antibiotics that never seemed to clear the infection. I ended up being treated on a drip.’

Cathy added: ‘I’m now well enough to work and lead a normal life but having repeated infections has robbed me of years of life.

‘My kidneys are damaged and I could end up on dialysis and needing a transplant.’

Prof Malone Lee concluded: ‘Doctors need to listen to patients when they say their infection has come back or never gone away.

‘They are more reliable than a urine test.’