Introduction
Pain when urinating is not only an unpleasant but also worrying phenomenon that can affect every man regardless of age and state of health. One speaks of pain while urinating when burning or stinging pain occurs before, during or after urination, which can last for days. Usually these pains occur only when urinating and not at rest.
The medical term for this phenomenon is “alguria”. The cause of the pain when urinating can be manifold. A visit to the doctor should be made immediately if the pain when urinating occurs together with fever, pus or blood in the urine.
What should I do if I have pain when I urinate?
So what can you do if you suddenly feel pain while urinating and you don’t really know how it happens? First of all, you should remain calm, as these are usually easily treatable causes. Only rarely is there a really serious illness behind it.
If cystitis is the cause of the pain or if the pain persists for a long time, a doctor should be consulted. If there is a fever together with pain when urinating, no time should be wasted until a doctor is consulted, as this is an infection of the upper urinary tract which must be treated as soon as possible. By means of a physical examination, an ultrasound and a detailed interview with the doctor, the cause of the pain can usually be found quickly and treated adequately.
Symptoms and possible causes
Fever alone, however, can also indicate other disease processes. If the fever is accompanied by heavy night sweats and unwanted weight loss, the possibility of a carcinoma must also be considered. Typically, prostate carcinomas cause the urethra to become obstructed or constricted so that urine flow can be impaired.
A tumorous disease should also be considered, especially in men over the age of 50 who complain of difficulty in urinating. There are clinical pictures in which, in addition to the pain during urination, changes and/or pain and/or itching of the glans can occur. Lesions and/or rubbing and ulcerous, painful spots on the glans can indicate a so-called “hard chancre”.
This is typical for the clinical picture of syphilis, which is caused by the pathogen Treponema pallidum. Syphilis is a venereal disease which was pushed back relatively far with the introduction of antibiotics in Germany. However, around 4000 men are still infected with syphilis every year throughout Germany.
A Syphilisinfektion does not release necessarily pain when urinating, however the ulcers, which develop in the process of the illness, can cause secondary such pain. The ulcerations on the glans disappear with syphilis by the way again after few weeks, which does not mean however that the illness is healed thereby. Rather, it enters a dormant stage, only to return in a more severe form months or years later.
During this time, the infected person is also potentially infectious for other sexual partners (syphilis transmission) and should seek medical treatment. Mechanical damage to the glans, for example through bruising, can also cause pain when urinating. Since the glans surrounds the end of the urethra, it can also be affected if the glans is injured.
In the event of crushing or other serious injuries to the glans, a doctor should therefore be consulted. Although the man’s fertility is not directly endangered in this area, late damage, such as loss of sensitivity or circulatory problems, can occur, which in turn can have an effect on sexual life. Blood in the urine is known in medical terminology as “hematuria”.
Just a few drops of blood are enough to stain the urine red. The cause of bloody urine can be due to damage or disease of the urinary tract. These begin in the kidneys – where the urine is produced – and end with the glans, where the urethra opens.
This is where the kidneys, upper urinary tract, bladder, prostate, lower urinary tract, and penis lie. Blood in the urine may indicate damage to one of these organs.Urinary tract infections are just as possible as kidney stones, drug side effects, mechanical damage or tumors. A sonographic examination (ultrasound) usually provides information about the cause.
In addition, the pain is often localized in symptomatic areas, such as flank pain, in the case of inflammation of the kidney. By definition, hematuria is also present when there are only a few erythrocytes – red blood cells – in the blood. However, this can only be diagnosed in the laboratory by means of urinalysis and not with the naked eye.
Pus, which occurs during urination, is a typical symptom of the venereal disease “gonorrhea“, also known as gonorrhea. The term gonorrhea is borrowed from the Dutch, and means something like dribbling. This means the individual pus drops that drip from the urethra during urination, before the urine (“Bonjour drops”)The bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae is responsible for gonorrhoeae.
The number of new gonorrhea infections in Germany amounts to about ten to twenty thousand per year, whereby a high number of unreported cases can be expected. The therapy is very simple and is carried out antibiotically. However, this type of disease should not be taken lightly, as if left untreated it can lead to destruction of the urinary tract.
In addition, in the absence of treatment, infertility, severe pain, and necrosis can occur, which in the worst case can end in life-threatening sepsis. During this time there is also the risk of infecting the sexual partner during unprotected sexual intercourse. However, gonorrhea is much less conspicuous in women, but leads to the same complications if it is not treated.
Irrespective of the cause, sexual intercourse should be refrained from until a reliable diagnosis has been made. However, gonorrhea is not the only cause of pus in urine, but it is probably the best known. Other causes include urinary tract infections, kidney abscesses, and kidney inflammation. Depending on the stage, these manifest themselves as a simple burning sensation when urinating, as red blood cells in the urine, or even as pus in the urine if the inflammation has already progressed to an advanced stage.
