Page 84 - Urological Health

2. Frequency and waking to urinate at night

The other major clue is frequent day and night urinating. In these cases, you would feel relieved of
pain when you go to the bathroom, but the pain would not be completely gone.You may not wake up
a lot during the night to go to the bathroom (also called nocturia), but you will wake up because your
bladder wakes you up (not because you are already up and have to go to the bathroom). Dysuria, or
burning when you urinate, is rarely associated with IC. Incontinence (or the involuntary loss of urine)
is also rarely linked to IC.

3. Urgency
Urgency, or the need to rush to the toilet, is a tricky one.

Are you experiencing a sudden, irresistible urge to go to the bathroom? If so, you likely have an irritable
or “unstable” bladder. In this case, urgency is not a symptom caused by IC.

Yet, if your “urgency” is really more of an extreme need to empty your bladder due to the increase in
pain that occurs as the bladder fills, then you likely have IC. Your urologist will need to clearly
understand what you mean when you say you have “urgency.” True urgency can be disturbing and
inconvenient, but, fortunately, you have many treatment options.
If you have a constant sense of pressure/pain, burning, and have little relief after you go to the
bathroom, you probably do not have bladder instability, but an infection. If you do have an infection,
you may also have blood in your urine. Although blood in the urine, either seen or detected by testing,
is not a symptom of IC, it is a very important finding and needs to be investigated thoroughly: from
the top of the kidneys down to the end of the urethra (the opening where the urine comes out of
the body). UNDER REVIEW

4. Pain during sex
The most common symptom that is missed, either because your urologist didn’t ask you about or
because you didn’t bring it up, is dysparunia (or painful sexual intercourse).

What are the tests?

After we’ve noted your symptoms, the next step is to get some tests done to exclude other conditions
that can cause the same, or similar, symptoms.

1. Urine tests: Urinalysis, urine culture, urine cytology
After a physical exam (including a vaginal exam in women and a rectal exam in men), the first and
most important thing to do is to test your urine. A test called a urinalysis will detect blood in the urine
and the possibility of an infection.
A urine culture (a test used to find and identify germs) will detect any infection and, if you have an
infection, the test will detect the type of bacteria growing and determine the right antibiotic. IC cannot
be diagnosed when you also have a bacterial, fungal, parasitic, sexually transmitted, or any other form
of urinary tract infection.

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