Authors' Reply

Abstract

Sir,Groenen et al. are mistaken to suggest that urinary tract infection should only be diagnosed when symptoms as dysuria, frequency, urgency and suprapubic pain are coexistent with significant bacteriuria. Such complaints are non-specific immediately after prolapse surgery, especially during or after bladder catheterisation.1 Therefore, we decided to measure only the objective outcome of significant bacteriuria.It is also wrong to state that we provide no data of bacteriuria in patients after recatheterisation. We would like to refer to the Materials and methods as well as Table 2, where these are noted.We agree that it would be interesting to find an optimum duration of catheterisation with respect to infection and recatheterisation. We demonstrated in our study that 60% of patients do not need any prolonged catheterisation at all, so that seems to be the optimum for them. In future studies we are focussing on the remaining 40% of patients to identify them immediately after surgery. We will then evaluate if our current protocol of three days prolongation is adequate for such high risk patients. We hope to present these results soon. References1. Tambyah PA, Maki DG. Catheter-associated urinary tract infection is rarely symptomatic. A prospective study of 1497 catheterized patients.