When to Go to Urgent Care for UTI (Urinary Tract Infection)?

Do you think a urinary tract infection (UTI) is just a painful nuisance if you can overlook it? However, these infections can result in permanent health issues if you delay proper treatment. Therefore if you experience symptoms of a urinary tract infection, consult your physical health care provider as soon as possible to confirm whether you are affected by a UTI.

What Are Urinary Tract Infections?

UTIs result from harmful bacteria entering any part of the urinary tract, including the bladder, kidney, ureters, and urethra. These infections cause annoying and painful symptoms in the lower urinary tract. However, the condition causes a severe problem when it spreads to the kidneys.

Symptoms of Urinary Tract Infections

Noticeable symptoms are not always evident with urinary tract infections. However, when the symptoms appear, you might experience one or all of the following. For example, you might have a persistent strong urge to urinate, a burning sensation when urinating, passing small quantities of urine frequently, pain in the pelvis for women, or urine appearing pink, red, cloudy, or cola-colored. You might also have lousy-smelling urine.

You might experience additional symptoms such as high fever, nausea, chills, vomiting, and pain in the side or upper back if the infection spreads to your kidneys, causing you to seek UTI urgent care near me for relief from the symptoms of the condition.

Causes of UTIs

UTIs generally occur when bacteria enter the urinary tract through the urethra and start multiplying in the bladder. The defenses of the urinary system fail to keep out the microscopic invaders as it is designed to do so. The failure of the urinary system’s defenses enables the bacteria to grow into a full-blown infection of the urinary tract.

UTIs generally occur in women affecting their bladder and urethra.

Women can get affected by an infection of the bladder caused by the E-coli bacteria generally found in the gastrointestinal tract. However, other bacteria are also responsible for bladder infections. This infection, alternatively called cystitis, also results from sexual intercourse, but women don’t have to remain sexually active to develop UTIs. Women are at a higher risk of cystitis because of their anatomy, particularly the lack of space between the urethra to the anus and the urethral opening to the bladder.

Infection of the urethra can occur when gastrointestinal bacteria spread from the anus to the urethra. Furthermore, the proximity of the female urethra near the vagina causes sexually-transmitted infections of the urethra, including herpes, gonorrhea, Mycoplasma, et cetera.

Risk Factors of UTIs

Women are commonly affected by UTIs, and many can experience multiple infections during their life. The risk factors specific to women for urinary tract infections include the female anatomy, sexual activity, specific birth control measures, and menopause.

Sexually active women tend to have more infections related to the urinary tract than women not sexually active. Changing sexual partners frequently can also make you prone to risks. Women using both control measures, such as diaphragms, are also at a higher risk besides women using spermicidal agents. After menopause, declining circulating estrogen levels cause changes in the urinary tract making women more vulnerable to infection.