Lower Urinary Tract Dysfunction in Chronic Chagas' Disease : Clinical and Urodynamic Presentation

Chagas disease is one of the most neglected vector-borne infectious disease worldwide. The first decades following the discovery of the pathology drove an international research enthusiasm, mainly concentrated on understanding the typical cardiac and digestive forms. Recently, research have been focused on vector control, which has been a huge success, at the price of neglecting the patients who already presented fixed and severe organic lesions due the chronic phase of the illness.

This study focus on a rarely studied aspect of this pathology: the involvement of the lower urinary tract and it's symptomatology in adults suffering from Chagas chronic disease.

Various studies have assessed the involvement of the lower urinary tract in chronic Chagas disease, the vast majority of them being on the animal model or very ancient human studies mainly on cadaveric specimen, the first of them being the primary description of Koeberle in 1963.

Human symptomatology deriving from bladder, ureteral and urethral chronic chagasic lesions are yet widely unknown, and only a few Brazilian and Mexican studies have intended to describe the clinical and urodynamic presentation of these patients.

The aim of this study is to assess the prevalence of urinary disorders in chronic chagasic patients and to describe their symptoms, through a complete clinical, ultrasonographic and urodynamic description.