Idiopathic chronic urinary retention in the female: Case report

Abstract

Female urinary retention may present various etiological aspects. From reports in literature, the most frequent cause appears to be a neurological lesion (60%), while there is no clearly identifiable cause in the remaining 40%. The Authors report the case of a young woman who, following slight retention immediately after a gynaecological operation, returned after 5 months requiring first of all indwelling vesical catheterisation followed by clean intermittent authocatheterisation. Checks and clinical assessments produced negative results and the real cause of urinary retention was not clear. Clean intermittent autocatheterisation was the only feasible therapy, also allowing functional recovery of the vesico-sphincteric apparatus.