Clinical significance of dysuria in women.

During a community survey 22% of women were found to have had dysuria in the previous year and half had had dysuria at some time in their lives. Various measurements were made in a random sample of 282 of these women. The means and the variances of the systolic and diastolic blood pressures in women with a past history of dysuria tended to be higher than in women who gave no such history. There were no significant differences in the means of plasma urea, plasma creatinine, and renal concentrating power between women with and without a previous history of dysuria, but a significant impairment of renal concentrating power was found in an additional group of 30 women who dated the onset of their dysuria to childhood.These findings suggest that urinary tract infection in adult women does not usually lead to progressive impairment of kidney function, whereas infection in childhood is more often associated with kidney damage.