Symptoms of Genitourinary Disorders
Before any scan or blood test, the patient hands you the diagnosis in their own words — if you know how to listen.
The big picture
Before any scan or blood test, the patient hands you the diagnosis in their own words — if you know how to listen. Urologic symptoms are not random; they follow rules. Pain has predictable referral patterns that point to a specific organ, and complaints about voiding sort cleanly into two groups that suggest two different kinds of disease. Master the patterns and a careful history alone will narrow the field dramatically before you ever pick up an instrument.
The framework: sort every urologic symptom into one of four buckets — (1) systemic manifestations like fever and weight loss, (2) pain, local or referred, (3) symptoms of the act of urination (the storage-versus-voiding split, often called LUTS), and (4) symptoms of the urine itself, such as blood or gas. Almost everything a urology patient tells you fits one of these four.
Mechanism pathway
Tap any step to see why it happens.
Diagnostic algorithm
Each step answers one question. Tap to expand.
Board traps
Simple cystitis is afebrile — fever with rigors means pyelonephritis or prostatitis, not "a bad UTI."
Painless visible haematuria → malignancy workup, every time — never dismiss it because it stopped.
Ureteric colic radiates (flank → groin → testis/labium) and brings GI symptoms; renal pain stays put in the flank.
Don't lump LUTS together — storage and voiding symptoms point to different diseases.
A child's pyelonephritis may show only fever with no urinary signs — culture the urine.
Pneumaturia is a fistula until proven otherwise.