[What to do with a normal urinary strip in case of lower urinary tract symptoms?]

Patients very often consult for lower urinary tract symptoms, that do not necessarily equate to common cystitis. When urinary leucocytes and nitrites are absent, the urinary strip has a very good negative predictive value and makes the diagnosis of a lower urinary tract infection very unlikely. One then has to search for other diagnoses and to clarify the nature of the symptoms, irritating or obstructive ones, their duration and to correlate them to the patient's age and gender. In sexually active young patients, infectious diseases predominate, such as uretritis or vaginitis, while, with age, the prevalence of dysfunction of vesical emptying, benign prostatic hyperplasia or atrophic vaginitis increase.