Saturday, December 08, 2007

Purple urine bag syndrome

Have you seen this? The topic was recently reviewed in SMJ. (Free full text via Medscape). It’s due to a combination of intestinal overgrowth (often due to chronic constipation), urinary tract infection with urine alkalinity and a reaction with plastic components of the urinary drainage system. It may be alarming to patients, family and nursing staff, but its only clinical significance is that the patient has a UTI.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I am Dr Lin from Taiwan.
I am impressed with the syndrome due to I met one recently when I visit a long term care institute in Taichung. She is an about 70 years old female with mostly bed ridden status. I period visit this institute every two weeks and I found the purple urine bag recently. Thanks for your sharing for I had sent her to nearby hospital to treat her infection.