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Urinary tract infection (lower) - women - Management
How should I follow up a woman with an indwelling catheter and treated for UTI?

  • Review after 48 hours, or according to the clinical situation, to ensure the woman is responding to treatment, and to check the results of the urine culture.
  • If urine culture shows that the organism is resistant to the current antibiotic, and:
    • If symptoms have not resolved, change to an antibiotic that the organism is sensitive to.
    • If symptoms have resolved, consider continuing with the current antibiotic.
      • If symptoms recur, start treat with an antibiotic shown in the culture to cover the infecting organism.
  • If the woman fails to respond to two courses of antibiotic shown by urine culture to be appropriate treatment, and compliance has been checked, consider referring for assessment and investigation.
Basis for recommendation

These recommendations are pragmatic. CKS found no published expert opinion.

  • When the uropathogen is resistant to the empirically chosen antibiotic and the woman has responded, the recommendation to consider continuing treatment until the end of the antibiotic course is based on comments of expert reviewers of previous versions of CKS topics on urinary tract infection. If symptoms have resolved, there is likely to be little added benefit from changing the antibiotic, because, either the woman is getting better of their own accord, or the laboratory assessment of resistance does not reflect the true susceptibility of the uropathogen.

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