Catheter Use in Neurogenic Lower Urinary Tract Dysfunction —Can Shared Decision-Making Help Us Serve Our Patients Better?

The objective of this review is to look at important factors that influence the patient experience with catheters, and how shared decision-making may be used to improve the catheter experiences among people living with neurologic disease.Recent FindingsWhen patients consider single-use versus reuse catheters, the issues of urinary infections, cleaning, preparation and storage, and social responsibility are major themes. When spinal cord injury patients consider surgical bladder reconstruction, the burden of recurrent symptoms/complications and achieving greater independence were frequently discussed. Systematic reviews have identified educational interventions around indwelling catheters as consistently effective at reducing catheter-related complications. Urinary tract infections are most often found to be significantly associated with poor quality of life among people with spinal cord injury, and prevention should be a focus of any catheter management plan. This information can be used by health-care providers and patients when they engage in shared decision-making around bladder management. For this process to be successful, the patient must be engaged in the process, the health-care provider must provide appropriate information to help them explore and compare treatments, and the patients ’ values and preferences must be elicited and integrated into the decision-making process. Then, criteria to evaluate if it is the correct decision should be identified and followed.Su...
Source: Current Bladder Dysfunction Reports - Category: Urology & Nephrology Source Type: research