Current insights into urogenital tuberculosis in clinical settings

Urogenital tuberculosis (UGT) is a common manifestation of extrapulmonary tuberculosis and can affect all organs of the urinary tract and male genital tract. The actual main problem of UGT is late diagnosis and a high prevalence of urogenital organ destruction. Little progress has been made in preventing the disease from progressing to more destructive forms. Knowledge diffusion of critical insights of UGT is the objective of this revision.

A narrative review of urogenital tuberculosis was performed in the databases of PubMed, Embase, and Scielo without time and language restriction. Terms used in the review were: 'Tuberculosis'; 'Urogenital Tuberculosis'; 'Prostate tuberculosis'; 'Kidney Tuberculosis' and 'Bladder tuberculosis.'

The actual problem of UGT is late diagnosis and the evolution to destructive forms of disease with high proportion of kidney loss, surgeries, chronic infection of the urinary tract and urologic related chronic renal failure. This problem solution is based on three key actions: 1) correct UGT features knowledge; 2) creation of diagnostic guidelines and 3) knowledge diffusion. The knowledge of UGT features and the knowledge diffusion are the main objectives of this review. The creation of liable guidelines is a task in progress and the objective of further studies.