NOTE: A surveillance case definition is a set of uniform criteria used to define a disease for public health surveillance. Surveillance case definitions enable public health officials to classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions. Surveillance case definitions are not intended to be used by healthcare providers for making a clinical diagnosis or determining how to meet an individual patient’s health needs.
Urethral inflammation that is not the result of infection with Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Urethral inflammation may be diagnosed by the presence of one of the following criteria:
No evidence of N. gonorrhoeae infection by culture, Gram stain, or antigen or nucleic acid detection
A clinically compatible case in a male in whom gonorrhea is not found, either by culture, Gram stain, or antigen or nucleic acid detection
Nongonococcal urethritis is a clinical diagnosis of exclusion. The syndrome may result from infection with any of several agents (see Chlamydia trachomatis, Genital Infection). If gonorrhea and chlamydia are excluded, a clinically compatible illness should be classified as NGU. An illness in a male that meets the case definition of NGU and C. trachomatis infection should be classified as chlamydia.