Interstitial Cystitis / Bladder Pain Checker

Interstitial cystitis, also called bladder pain syndrome, is a chronic bladder condition. Its main features are an unpleasant sensation — pain, pressure, or discomfort — that feels related to the bladder, along with lower-urinary-tract symptoms like urgency and frequency. A hallmark is that the discomfort often builds as the bladder fills and eases soon after urinating. Despite the older name, it isn't an infection: urine tests don't show bacteria, and antibiotics don't help. It's a real, recognized condition that can significantly affect daily life, and it's managed rather than cured, with the specific mix and severity of symptoms varying a lot from person to person.

This matters, because they can feel similar — urgency, frequency, and discomfort with urination. The key difference is testing and time. A urinary-tract infection (UTI) shows bacteria on a urine test and usually clears with antibiotics; a sexually transmitted infection (STI) is caused by a specific organism found on testing and is also treated with medication. IC/BPS, by contrast, is defined partly by the absence of infection — symptoms persist for more than six weeks and urine tests don't show a UTI. That's exactly why a urine test comes first: new or burning urinary symptoms are far more often a UTI or an STI, and those need to be ruled out (and treated) before anyone considers IC/BPS. If burning or urgency is your main concern, start with our UTI-or-STD checker and testing options.

No — and it's built not to. It reads whether your answers fit, partly fit, or don't clearly fit the pattern clinicians associate with IC/BPS, using the features you can notice yourself: the character of the pain, urgency and frequency, how long it's lasted, and whether an infection has been ruled out. But IC/BPS is a diagnosis of exclusion. It can only be made by a clinician after a urine test rules out infection and other conditions — an overactive bladder, an STI, bladder stones, bladder cancer, endometriosis, and others — are considered. So the most this tool can honestly say is whether the pattern is worth discussing. It never tells you that you do or don't have IC/BPS.

There's no single test that confirms it, so clinicians work by careful assessment and exclusion. A urologist or urogynecologist takes a detailed history of your symptoms and their timing, examines you, and runs a urine test to rule out an infection — this step comes first. They may ask you to keep a bladder diary of how often and how much you urinate, and sometimes use additional tests such as looking inside the bladder (cystoscopy) to exclude other causes. Because it's a diagnosis of exclusion, part of the work-up is making sure something else — an infection, an STI, an overactive bladder, or another pelvic condition — isn't the real explanation. You don't need a confirmed diagnosis to start discussing ways to ease symptoms.

A few situations need care right away rather than a checker. A fever together with pain in your side or back (flank) can point to a kidney infection; blood you can see in your urine always needs to be evaluated to find the cause; and being unable to urinate at all when you feel the need (urinary retention) is urgent. If any of those apply, go to urgent care or an emergency room, or call your local emergency number — don't wait. IC/BPS itself is a chronic, ongoing pattern; these acute warning signs are separate problems that deserve prompt in-person care.

Yes. This checker runs entirely in your browser. Your answers are read on your own device and are never sent to a server, saved, or shared — close the tab and they're gone. It's general educational information based on the American Urological Association's IC/BPS guideline and NIDDK and MedlinePlus patient guidance; it can't diagnose you, isn't a urine test or a scan, and doesn't replace an evaluation by a licensed clinician.