- Treatment with systemic antibiotics for 10 days. There exists, however, no prospective randomized clinical trials indicating that this duration of antibiotic therapy is optimal in patients with spinal cord injury. Since catheter-free, able-bodied patients with lower UTI are successfully treated with courses of antibiotics as short as 1-3 days, we propose that by removing the focus of infection (i.e. the original catheter) a 5-day course of systemic antibiotics would be sufficient for treating catheter-related lower UTI in patients with spinal cord injury.