Here are some scenarios that the clinician may see in practice - in patients with complicated urinary tract infections.  

Yes - QUITE SIMILAR - just like in cats, flares or acute episodes happen during stressful conditions and tend to get better when the environment is better (MEMO). It is a diagnosis of exclusion in both species. Urgency can be quite severe in people as it is in some cats.

This question was asked during a recent CE session: In checking for bacterial UTI on urinalysis, is doing a slide where urine is spread in monolayer (like a blood smear) and staining in diff-quick - can this technique be used to look for bacteria?YES preparing a DIFF QUICK stain of a spread of the urine sediment is a good idea to increase one’s confidence that bacteria are really there (or not). Staining with Gram stain can also provide meaningful information as to whether bacteria are there, and if so, are they Gram negative or Gram positive. Many things in cat urinary sediment look like real bacteria but they are something else - small crystals, small lipid droplets, cellular detritus, etc. Brownian motion of these small particles adds to the suspicion that they may be bacteria. In the absence of an increase in the WBC in the urinary sediment and in the face of concentrated urine above 1.035 - it becomes way less likely that a real bacterial UTI exists. Quantitative urine culture (cfu/ml) is still the gold standard as to whether there is really a bacterial UTI or more likely NOT.

Tonight I'm speaking about treatment and management of the Feline Idiopathic Cystitis patient.  Appropriate treatment of FIC includes consideration to things beyond the urinary bladder!  I am showing a couple of videos (included here) and beg the question - do these represent "things" that are stressful for the cat or that provide enrichment?  What do you think?  Login and comment ... In this video, a boy is playing with a cat - dragging it around in a box. Trouble viewing this video?  Click here In this video, a Golden Retriever is "boxing" with a Siamese cat. Trouble vieiwng this video?  Click here

The results from this preliminary study do indeed look promising. It should be noted that the difference betwen the GAG treatment and the saline treament did not achieve the magical level for statistical significance of p < 0.05 - it was 0.06.    It should also be noted that GAG treatments have NOT been found to more effective than placebo when given as oral or injectable treatments for cats with NON-obstructive forms of FIC.  Even though the GAG treated cats did not achieve statistical significance over the placebo treated cats with urethral obstruction, NONE of those treated with the GAG had a recurrent obstruction within one week.  It is important to also keep in mind that the difference in re-obstruction rate was only studied to 7 days after the urinary catheter was pulled.  Even so, no cat treated with the GAG preparation and protocol eperienced a re-obstruction within the 7 days of observation. It would be interesting and clinically important to know if the salutary effect of GAG treatment in cats with urethral obstruction extends beyond the 7 days of observation - at 1, 3, and 6 months for example.  YES further studies with this GAG preparation and protocol appear to be warranted to see if the beneficial effect is apparent when larger numbers of cats are studied and to see how durable the effect is beyond 7 days following pulling the urinary catheter.  Dennis Chew