FAQs

When you attend you will be greeted by a receptionist in the front hall of 10 Harley Street. We shall ask you for a urine sample, which needs to be passed fresh, and this will be tested immediately on sight. Your chosen doctor will take your history. They will discuss your case with you and advise on the best course of action. There will be no invasive tests and a physical examination is usually unnecessary. We do not offer intimate pelvic or genital examinations as we are not set up for that at Harley Street. We shall start treatment immediately and it is unlikely that there will be need for any additional investigations, beyond the urine test. You will walk away with a detailed treatment plan and a prescription ready to start treatment. A copy of this also gets sent to your GP via email straight away.

Yes, a urine test is included in the overall cost.

The appointment will last for 30 minutes.

No, there are no other tests required at the appointment. If your clinician feels you require any other tests they will refer you to the correct clinician.

 You do not need to stop medications in preparation for your first appointment with us unless you have some other reason for doing so. Being on antibiotics or any other medications will not prevent us from assessing you properly and making the diagnosis.

 We do not use urine cultures because they are too inaccurate. We advise against changing the treatment regimen on the grounds of a urine culture/antibiotic sensitivity result. Cultures provide misleading information, and it is a mistake to be guided by the sensitivity tests that they report. A common cause for a patient getting into difficulties is their medication being changed in these circumstances. We do not advise patients to spend money on getting special cultures or DNA analysis. We will not use these to guide our treatment decisions. We have published several papers that make it clear that the enhanced cultures and DNA analysis are providing no useful information in the context of chronic UTI and that it is not wise to act on their findings.

 The methods that we use here to detect urinary tract infection are well validated and vastly superior to the urinary dipstick and routine urine culture. The tests are unusual because we use immediately fresh urine and a microscope to count the white blood cells and the urothelial cells which are important pointers to cystitis.

Yes, we do. For international patients we must ask that they are able to identify a doctor with whom we may communicate. We are not asking the doctor to manage the condition, since that is a most specialised role, but we must insist that there be a doctor who is taking responsibility for your general health and will be prepared to be apprised of our treatment plan. We shall always provide the prescriptions but have no objection to a local physician translating them. There are important exceptions which apply when we are consulting on treatment for a patient living in the USA, Australia and some other nations with border and licensing restrictions. Our advice and prescribing capacity will be limited. We may not prescribe directly, and the UK pharmacies may not post out to those nations. Thus, it is imperative that the patient has a doctor practicing locally who is willing to prescribe in response to our summaries. There is no option for us to prescribe directly from here in the UK. We must be able to communicate with such a doctor directly. This is no precedent; we are communicating with doctors all over the world who are working with our protocol. Our methods have now been well published in the peer-reviewed literature.

 Yes, we offer remote consultations, however, we do prefer to see patients face-to-face especially for the first consultations.