Urinary tract infection rate per patient-year

Method

Number of culture-documented urinary tract infection episodes per patient-year of follow-up, pooled as a mean difference. The culture threshold, the symptom requirement, and whether asymptomatic bacteriuria counts are recorded on the edge.

The method is part of the endpoint identity. Studies measuring the same quantity by a different method are held as separate endpoints.

Notes

SIGN INVERSION against time to first urinary tract infection recurrence, the co-primary outcome in the same papers: episodes per year improves by FALLING while days to recurrence improves by RISING. The two are near-reciprocal quantities computed from the same follow-up, so mapping one onto the other both reverses the finding and double-counts the same episodes. Also distinct from the proportion of patients with at least one recurrence, a dichotomous endpoint that discards multiplicity and moves far less.