Management of Acute Urinary Retention in the Emergency Department

Points & Pearls Excerpt

• Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is the etiology for AUR in roughly half of cases.⁶ In women and children, AUR is often indicative of serious pathology.^7,8
• AUR can be a herald sign of toxidromes as well as evidence of severe neurologic pathology.
• The 4 major categories of causes of AUR are: (1) structural, (2) medication/toxicologic, (3) neurologic, and (4) infectious. (See Table 1.)
• Structural causes account for approximately 75% of adult cases of AUR; 67% of these are caused by benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).