Please note that all guidance is currently under review and some may be out of date. We recommend that you also refer to more contemporaneous evidence in the interim.
Download our fact sheet to provide your patients with easy to follow guidance on acute urinary retention.
This fact sheet has the #withconsumers tick from the Consumers Health Forum of Australia
Urinary retention is the inability to empty the bladder. With acute urinary retention, you can’t urinate (pass water) at all, even though you have a full bladder (the organ in your body where urine is stored before it leaves the body). Acute urinary retention requires urgent treatment.
Anyone can experience urinary retention, but it is most common in men over 50 because of prostate enlargement.
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Version history
First published: July 2019
Due for review: July 2022