A comparative study of clinical symptoms and treatment outcomes of acute bacterial prostatitis according to urine culture

Purpose: Because acute bacterial prostatitis (ABP) is an urgent condition of the prostate but prostatic massage is contraindicated at the onset of ABP, clinical symptoms and urine tests are used for diagnosis. In this study, we compared the clinical symptoms and treatment outcomes of patients with negative urine culture results, to whom only empirical antibiotics were administered, with those of patients with positive urine culture results. Materials and Methods: Patients were divided into two groups according to the results of urine culture. Then, the clinical symptoms and course of each group were analyzed. In addition, age, symptoms, antibiotics, mean inpatient and outpatient length of treatment, and the treatment outcome of each group were also analyzed. Results: Of the total 144 patients, the positive urine culture group consisted of 51 patients (35.4%) and the most frequent bacterial strain causing ABP was reported to be Escherichia coli. Fever and storage symptoms were significantly more common in the positive urine culture group than in the negative urine culture group (p=0.031 and 0.047, respectively). Only inpatient treatment was significant longer in the positive urine culture group than in the negative urine culture group (p<0.05). The mean length of treatment of inpatients was 4.8±2.6 days and 6.2±2.9 days in the two groups, respectively. No sequelae such as prostatic abscess or chronic prostatitis were found in either group. Conclusions: In the treatment of ABP, the use of empirical antibiotics can be expected to have sufficient effects regardless of bacterial culture. However, it is hard to determine the causative bacteria of ABP by urine culture results only.