Indwelling Urinary Catheterization Versus Clean Intermittent Catheterization for the Short-term Management of Hospitalized Patients With Transient Acute Urinary Retention

Overview

Objective: Acute urinary retention (AUR) is a common problem in hospitalized patients. Either indwelling urethral catheterization or clean intermittent catheterization (CIC) can be the choice of treatment. In chronic urinary retention, most physicians prefer CIC to chronic indwelling urethral catheter on the basis of the claim that the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) is lower. Method: The patients were randomized into indwelling urethral catheter and CIC groups. The primary outcomes of the study were catheter-associated asymptomatic bacteriuria and CAUTI. The secondary outcomes were pain, hematuria, cloudy urine, and quality of life.

We queried the hospitalized patients in Ramathibodi Hospital who developed first-time AUR from June 2014 to May 2015. Patients under 18 years of age with a history of urinary retention, urinary tract infection, and poor compliance were excluded from this study. All the patients gave their written informed consents. The patients were randomly divided into two groups depending on the type of assigned intervention: CIC and indwelling urethral catheter groups. All the patients were followed up after 2 weeks; urinalysis and urine culture were obtained at the time of AUR and whenever the patients developed UTI-associated symptoms. The patients with positive urine culture at the time of AUR were excluded from the study.

Conditions