Complicated Urinary Tract Infections (cUTI): Clinical Guidelines for Treatment and Management
IDSA has released the first IDSA guidelines on management and treatment of complicated urinary tract infections (cUTIs). These guidelines provide practical advice for clinicians who manage patients with cUTIs in inpatient and outpatient settings. Barbara Trautner, MD, PhD, Co-Chief, WashU Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases, co-chaired the panel that created these guidelines.
These guidelines offer practical recommendations for clinicians managing patients with complicated urinary tract infections (cUTIs) in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Building on prior UTI guidance, they expand the scope to specifically address cUTIs, provide a clear clinical classification of uncomplicated versus complicated infections, and outline a stepwise approach to empiric antibiotic selection.
“The panelists and our patient representatives wrote these guidelines for the clinicians on the front lines who see and treat complicated UTIs—including ER physicians and hospitalists, as well as ID doctors, pharmacists, and APPs. We realigned the definitions of uncomplicated and complicated UTI in accordance with clinical practice, defining a complicated UTI as one that has progressed beyond the bladder.”
-Barbara Trautner
The guidelines also include recommendations for IV-to-oral transition timing and appropriate treatment duration. All recommendations are grounded in evidence from systematic literature reviews and are developed using the standardized GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) framework to ensure consistency in rating evidence quality and strength of recommendations.
