Bladder infections are one of the most common complaints we take care of here at the doctor’s office. But common things can still be serious.
Signs you may have a bladder infection:
- urgency to urinate
- frequency of urination
- pain with urination
- odor to your urine
- blood in urine
If you suspect you have a bladder infection please do not take the over the counter medication “AZO” (or other similar products that turn your urine red or orange) before you have a urinalysis done. These products interfere with our ability to analyze your urine sample.
Why do we want to check your sample first?
Not all bladder discomfort is a bladder infection:
- we want to correctly identify the problem
- sometimes overactive bladder may present this way
If you DO have an infection, we want to check something called a “culture with sensitivities”:
- this tells us specifically what bacteria
- and what antibiotics will work the best
Blood in urine is not normal and if you have that it needs to be assessed:
- sometimes this could be due to an infection
- but could be something else, like cancer
After you have the urinalysis done, feel free to use AZO or similar products for bladder spasms, it does work well to bring pain relief.
NEVER use these over the counter remedies ALONE, they are rarely enough to clear a bladder infection but might make you feel better temporarily. We don’t want to mask a raging infection, we want to fully treat it, which requires antibiotics.
