Bladder Condition Difficult to Diagnose

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Bladder Condition Difficult to Diagnose
Fri Aug 23,12:06 PM ET

(HealthScoutNews) -- It's always a painful when your doctor can't tie your pain to a specific cause. A common example is interstitial cystitis (IC), a chronic pelvic pain disorder for which diagnosis is difficult and there's no known cure.



IC affects an some 700,000 Americans, 90% of whom are women. Their recurring discomfort or pain in the bladder and surrounding pelvic region is accompanied by an urgent or frequent need to urinate. In severe cases, that need recurs up to 60 times daily.

Because IC varies so much in symptoms and severity, most researchers believe that it is not one, but several, diseases. One of the steps in diagnosing IC involves eliminating the possibility the patient could be suffering from another ailment.

Current treatments -- including bladder distension, bladder instillation, oral drugs, exercise and diet -- are aimed at relieving symptoms. And various types of surgery are being tested with unpredictable results.

In 1998, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), a part of the National Institutes of Health ( news - web sites) (NIH), initiated the IC Clinical Trials Group, a project designed to develop and test new treatment strategies for patients with IC. The first trial focuses on two oral drugs Elmiron and Atarax.

The second trial will test whether the bacterium Bacillus Calmette-Gurin (BCG) will relieve the pelvic pain and frequent urination that are hallmarks of IC.

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