Prostatitis

Abstract

Prostatitis is a common and frustrating problem for the urologist and the general practitioner. It is a difficult subject because the term prostatitis includes any patient with unexplained pelvic, genitourinary or ejaculatory symptoms with or without a 'tender' prostate on rectal examination. Not only is there no generally accepted definition, but there are no clearly established criteria for making the diagnosis, and no definite pathophysiology. The clinical findings used to diagnose prostatitis, even in the most thoughtful studies, are so nonspecific that refutation of studies is easy; for example, it can often be shown that selected patients are in most ways no different from some healthy adult men among the general population. Because very few authors have defined prostatitis and almost no two works use the same criteria for inclusion of patients within a study, few direct comparisons can be made from the findings of one author to those of another. Indeed, except for true bacterial prostatitis due to Enterobacteriaceae, pseudomonas and enterococci, which is invariably associated with recurrent bacteriuria and on which most of the data in this paper will concentrate, it is fair to comment that little more is known about prostatitis than was reported by Hugh H Young and his associates in 1906.