Curriculum · Elderly / Community care
Asymptomatic bacteriuria in older women
What it is
Asymptomatic bacteriuria is bacteriuria in a patient who does not have the symptoms that raise concern for a urinary tract infection, and on whether to treat it the answer is flat: it does not require antibiotic therapy at this time.
The error it exists to catch is antibiotic therapy given to an older woman for general malaise alone: general malaise in the absence of these symptoms is unlikely to represent a UTI and unlikely to improve with antibiotic therapy.
How common it is
In women age 70 and older the incidence of asymptomatic bacteriuria is 16%-18%, and in chronically incontinent and disabled older adults rates may reach 43%.
Those rates carry the whole point. Where bacteriuria is that common in older women who are well, finding bacteriuria in an older woman who is ill does not by itself say that the urinary tract is the cause.