What is chronic urinary tract infection? A systematic review

Objective: To define ‘chronic’ urinary tract infection (UTI) by reviewing current published research that employs this term. Methods: We systematically searched Medline and Embase for studies covering all aspects of human UTI. For comparison, current urological and infectious disease guidelines were also reviewed. Results: The electronic search yielded a total of 2175 articles, of which 154 were eventually included for data extraction. Of these, six studies presented a definition of chronic UTI within the text. The definitions were highly incongruent among studies and often identical to the current definition of ‘recurrent’ UTI. Conclusion: Chronic UTI is an undefined term, which has nevertheless been increasingly used in the past 15 years. Chronic UTI does not represent a distinct clinical or microbiological condition that justifies its use as medical diagnosis.