1984 Volume 27 Issue 1 Pages 73-80
The presence and the volume of residual urine (RU) were determined by postvoid bladder ultrasonography in 116 diabetic patients and 56 normal controls with no evidence of organic urological disease.The possible relationship between abnormal RU and the clinical features of diabetes mellitus was also investigated.
A significant correlation was found between the bladder area from ultrasound pictures in the middle sagittal plane and the actual volume of RU obtained by catheterization (r=0.917, p<0.001). As compared to the controls, some imaging of RU was more frequently found in diabetics regardless of age, and 20 (17.2%) showed abnormal RU with a bladder area of over 10 cm2.Most of the cases were poorly-controlled, long duration of diabetes and revealed some neurological abnormalities including autonomic neuropathy as judged from the coefficient ofvariation of the R-R interval in resting ECGs.Furthermore, asymptomatic and significant bacteriuria (>105/ml) was observed in about half of the diabetics with abnormal RU.Of these cases, somepoorly-controlled diabetics showed a definite decrease in RU after improvement of diabetic control only for a few months.
These results confirm that ultrasonography represents a reliabletechnique for detecting RU and suggest that RU in diabetics may have some relationship with notonly neurological abnormalities, but also metabolic disturbance, and plays a role in the increasedprevalence of urinary tract infection.
