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Acute urinary retention (AUR) is the inability to voluntarily pass urine. It is the most common urologic emergency. Treatment includes a urinary catheter insertion to decompress and empty the bladder.
This OC includes a retrospective case presentation of a 77-year-old male patient who went into acute urinary retention during admission and following rapid bladder decompression via catheterization was found to have moderate-severe bladder injury evident by prolonged hematuria. A urology registrar implied that this could have been prevented by gradual decompression.
The use of gradual bladder decompression instead of rapid bladder decompression in acute urinary retention is thought to prevent or decrease the likelihood of post-decompression bladder injury by some clinicians.
This SOC dismantles this myth by looking into the research evidence.