Urinary retention for the neurologist.

Urinary retention is a common problem, most often due to an anatomical lesion in the urinary tract causing obstruction, such as a urethral stricture or prostate enlargement. However, a subset of patients have no structural urological lesion, and so require neurological evaluation. We present a patient with acute urinary retention who was found to have chronic meningitis, and review the neurological causes for urinary retention.