Antibiotics for UTI question

Factual Questions
1

I’m not really asking for advice because this is in the past, but recently I developed a UTI (it’s gone now). I was sent for a urine test which came back positive and the lab proceeded to do a culture to find out whichi ickies I had and what worked best at killing them, etc.

Now my question involves this: The process took several days. I was given a choice of having the doctor call in an antibiotic without knowing the exact type of bacteria involved and then possibly having to switch to a different one when the culture came back.

I opted to wait. My reasoning was that the whole point of the culture was that different bacteria are susceptible and resistant to different things. Why risk breeding a couple of days worth of resistant bugs if I wasn’t in dire need? I should add that my symptoms were fairly mild, and I had no fever, back pain, or other symptoms of a kidney infection.

From a medical point of view was I right to wait?

2

This is not a right or wrong question. but if the symptoms are mild and stay mild, there is little harm in waiting. In a young healthy woman, there is maybe a 85-90% chance that the UTI is caused by E. coli, and that either cotrimoxazole (bactrim, septra, SMX/TMP), macrodantin (nitrofurantoin, macrobid) or ciprofloxacin would likely do the job. Cultures are a little more important in severe infections, pregnant patients, those with possible STDs, patients with severe chronic disease and patients at high risk of a UTI not caused by the usual suspects.