The acute retentions frequently may recur. There are patients who after the slightest irregularity of living or following a slight cold get such an acute retention. In other cases such a retention recurs only after some years. Finally fortunately I have known patients, who had only a single retention and who for many years never again were taken ill.
But we are aware that an acute retention is the commencement of a chronic incomplete retention, that is to say: after the acute retention has gone and the patient is able to pass the urine voluntarily, there remains a certain amount of residual urine in the bladder.
As a matter of fact, if such acute retentions occur frequently, or if there is a chronic retention for a long time, the constitution and the whole organism will be most seriously affected. At first disorders of the digestive organs appear- always presupposed, that there is no infection of the bladder. The patents lose appetite, they do not care for meat or solid food, preferring liquid food. These disorders are the symptom of a serious blood-intoxication, a so-called urosepsis, the pressure of the residual urine on the kidneys, makes them unable to eliminate the products of metabolism from the blood.
