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After you have had urinary tract infection, it may be important to follow up under the following circumstances:
· You have recurrent urinary tract infections or about three within the span of a year
· You are a child under the age of ten, especially with more than one urinary tract infection in the past
· You are pregnant
· You are a male with a bladder infection
Let's take a look at what the follow up should be in each situation If you have recurrent urinary tract infections and have had at least three infections within a 12 month period of time, your doctor may want to follow a follow up urine culture and place you on a preventative antibiotic, such as Bactrim (trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole) or Macrodantin (nitrofurantoin). These can be taken at one day indefinitely or you can take one pill after intercourse but no more often than once per day. This is due urinary tracts follow intercourse in many women and taking a pill after intercourse can prevent these kinds of urinary tract infections.
If you are a child under the age of ten who has had at least two infections, there may be a condition known as a double ureter that can result in urine backing up into the ureters, causing recurrent infections. There can be two ordinary ureters but a lot of reflux into the ureters so that the doctor might want to do some surgery to fix the double ureter or to reposition the ureters so reflux does not occur. The test that checks for this condition is a voiding cystourethrogram, which has you void under X-ray with dye inside the bladder. Reflux can be seen under X-ray as dye going up inside the ureters. If there is more than one ureter on a side, this can be seen under a voiding cystourethrogram. If surgery is not indicated, preventive antibiotics may be tried to block the presence of urinary tract infections.
If you are pregnant, you definitely want to get rid of the urinary tract infection because this type of infection can cause preterm labor or a kidney infection in pregnancy. Doctors will often do a follow up urinalysis and urine culture to make sure the bacteria is clear from the urine. If it is not clear from the urine, another antibiotic is probably required. If there are still bacteria in the urine, a chronically taken antibiotic must be attempted to keep the bacteria count in the urine to a low level. No X-ray tests are necessary in pregnancy and such tests would not be indicated in pregnancy due o X-ray exposure being dangerous in pregnancy.
If you are a male with a urinary tract infection, you should have a follow up urinalysis and urine culture to make sure the urine is clear. You may need to have your prostate evaluated to make sure that the urinary tract infection is not caused by an enlarged prostate. This might involve a prostate examination through the rectum to check for enlargement. Young men with recurrent bladder infections may need to have an IVP (intravenous pyelogram) to check for kidney stones or for abnormalities of the urinary tract infection causing the recurrent infections.
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Source by Pamella Neely
