Inability to Urinate

• Inability to Urinate Overview
• Inability to Urinate Causes
• Inability to Urinate Symptoms
• When to Seek Medical Care
• Exams and Tests
• Inability to Urinate Treatment
• Self-Care at Home
• Medical Treatment
• Next Steps
• Follow-up
• Prevention
• Outlook
• Synonyms and Keywords
• Authors and Editors

Inability to Urinate Overview

When you cannot empty your bladder completely, or at all, despite an urge to urinate, you have urinary retention. To understand how urinary retention occurs, you need to understand the basics of how urine is stored in and released from the body.

The bladder is a balloon-like organ in your lower belly (pelvis) that stores urine.

• Urine is composed of waste and water filtered from the blood by the kidneys.
  
  
• It travels down thin tubes called ureters to the bladder.
  
  
• When about 1 cup (200-300 mL) of urine has collected in the bladder, a signal is sent via nerves in the spinal cord to the brain; the brain then returns a signal that starts contractions in the bladder wall. At the same time, the internal sphincter muscle relaxes.
  
  
• These 2 reactions combined allow urine to flow out of the bladder and down a narrow tube called the urethra.
  
  
• From there, it is released from the body by urination.
  
  
• To a certain point, you can control when you urinate. We are all familiar with the experience of having to urinate at an inconvenient time. When you "hold it in," you are squeezing a muscle called the external sphincter to keep urine in the urethra.

Retention can be an acute (new, short-term) or chronic (ongoing, long-term) condition. It always requires medical attention, sometimes hospitalization, for treatment, symptom relief, and detection of the underlying cause. Failure to treat the condition can lead to infections or damage to the urinary tract and kidneys.

Urinary retention is not an unusual condition. It is more common in men than in women.