Department of Urology, Radboud University Hospital, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
The term 'prostatitis' denotes a condition of inflammation of the prostate. Prostatitis is usually employed to describe any unexplained symptom or condition that might possibly emanate from a disorder of the prostate gland. The diagnosis of nonbacterial prostatitis is reserved for those patients with symptoms localized to the prostate, but without bacteria in the expressed prostatic secretion. The purpose of this article is to review etiology, pathology and the recent advances in diagnosis and therapy of nonbacterial prostatitis.