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Brian Vastag

JAMA. 2001;286:406-408.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Washington—Sometimes a diagnosis is a dead end, a label with little guidance. So it goes with chronic prostatitis—also called chronic pelvic pain syndrome, the newer term—which prompts some 2 million office visits in the United States each year (J Urol. 1998;159:1224-1228).

A catch-all term to describe an array of symptoms that include pain in various places, urinary problems, and sexual dysfunction, "prostatitis" reflects a lack of knowledge regarding origins and effective treatments that led urologist Thomas Stamey, MD, to call the diagnosis a "wastebasket of clinical ignorance."

To illustrate the point, Leroy Nyberg, MD, PhD, head of urology research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), sketched a typical scenario: a man complains of prostate symptoms and, after ruling out obvious bacterial infections, urethral strictures, bladder disorders, and cancer, the physician shrugs his shoulders, calls it chronic nonbacterial prostatitis, and prescribes . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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