On the Internet there are many stories of people with serious UTI problems; antibiotics which do not work for them - indeed, bacterial resistance to antibiotics has been in the news again recently, reporting concerns of Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer for England. At the risk of underestimating the problem, I do have a less pessimistic case to report.
In January 2013 I broke my neck at C4/5 in an accident. The spinal cord injury has left me with double incontinence. In May 2013 I had a suprapubic catheter installed.
Catheters have often been accused of causing UTIs - reflected in the acronym CAUTI (catheter associated urinary tract infection). Indeed, between having my catheter installed and July 24th 2016 I did have more than a dozen UTIs, all of them soon stopped by taking 4x50mg Nitrofurantoin for a few days.
Between the nights of 15/16th January and 23/24th July 2016 I had 23 catheter blockages. The contents of my catheter at the time of blockage were never tested but it began to look as though some, perhaps most, of my blockages were associated with UTIs: so if my infections could be stopped, so too would the blockages.
I started using Nitrofurantoin to prevent rather than to cure infections immediately after my last blockage on 24th July 2016. I have had no blockage since. I took 50mg each evening for 30 days; then I gradually reduced it, and from the beginning of this year, partially replaced it with natural antibiotics including lemon juice and vinegar. So far this year I have taken only 33x50mg Nitrofurantoin.
I have had no blockage and no serious UTI since 24th July 2016; certainly no UTI sufficiently clear to be recognisable without bacterial analysis or to create enough sediment to cause a catheter blockage. So far, there has been no evidence of bacterial resistance to Nitrofurantoin in the doses I have been taking.
Of course, this is only my own story. I do not know for how many other people the methods would be suitable.
