Urinary Infection Prophylaxis in Women

Excerpt

Prolonged antibacterial therapy for women with recurrent urinary tract infection was considered futile and perhaps ill advised (1) until prospective controlled studies by Bailey and colleagues (2) and by us (3) clearly showed the efficacy of continuous systemic low-dose antimicrobial prophylaxis in patients with multiple closely spaced infections. These studies were precipitated by evidence that urinary infections in females usually recurred because of entry of a new organism into the bladder from the fecal-perineal reservoir (4, 5).

The value of chemoprophylaxis for bacterial infections is controversial. The use of a narrow-spectrum agent targeted toward a single microorganism for a defined,