Dr. Bradley on disseminating high-quality information on asymptomatic bacteriuria

In this video, Megan S. Bradley, MD, shares the take-home message from the recent Urogynecology paper “Online Search Strategies and Results From a Crowdsourced Survey on Asymptomatic Bacteriuria.” Bradley is an assistant professor, department of obstetrics, gynecology & reproductive sciences, division of urogynecology & reconstructive pelvic surgery and fellowship director of Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Medical Education Program at UPMC, Pennsylvania.

Transcription:

What questions arise from this research?

I think the main question is just how to disseminate this information. Obviously, there's a huge need. People aren't learning about this and trying to figure out, how we get this information into the hands of people, especially because it is a very common condition, especially as people age. Some studies suggest that upwards of 20%, 30%, 40% of people, as they get older in their 60s, 70s, 80s, might have this issue. So I think this is commonly, we know from studies, being really overtreated, but trying to figure out the best way to get information to people, so they're comfortable with our evidence-based guidelines, so it makes sense to them. And also, people are just looking up information on their own, which we obviously know people do, how to make sure that we get the right information to people, whether that's through search optimization, or ChatGPT or all the new things in that regard, we need to figure out how to get the high-quality information into the hands of the users.

What is the take-home message for the practicing urologist?

I think people know this, but I mean, knowing that people have not heard of this condition, that there's still going to be that barrier that when you bring this up or say you don't need to treat this, that there still is unfortunately, going to be these barriers to, hearing that information and that people really do want information. I think that there is trust in providers; we did learn that from some of the questions, and that people really do want high-quality information.

Is there anything you would like to add?

I think it was also just that this kind of way of trying to get information from a large group of patients, we had really great representation across the country, and knowing that there is good evidence for utilizing this type of practice to get survey-based data from a broad population they might not otherwise have access to in your health care system or your local community. So I think that was a novel part of the project and was, I think, interesting to add to the literature.

This transcription was edited for clarity.