Talk:Urethra

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Urethra article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Anatomy: Gross High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Anatomy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Anatomy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AnatomyWikipedia:WikiProject AnatomyTemplate:WikiProject AnatomyAnatomy articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article has been classified as relating to gross anatomy.

Animal anatomy Mid‑importance

	This article is part of WikiProject Animal anatomy, an attempt to organise a detailed guide to all topics related to animal anatomy apart from human anatomy. To participate, you can edit the attached article, or contribute further at WikiProject Animal anatomy. This project is an offshoot of WikiProject AnimalsAnimal anatomyWikipedia:WikiProject Animal anatomyTemplate:WikiProject Animal anatomyAnimal anatomy articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Removed from article

We are taught the urethra has 4 parts the pre-prostatic part being missed out herre so I will add it in.

---

I think the "make sure to clean the urethra toy" needs to be made NPOV; make it say something like "health professionals advise people to clean urethra toys", instead of reading like a sex ed brochure.

Wheres the fourth pre prostatic part of the uretha?

Why does someone keep deleting the fat that there are 4 parts of the male urethra?

Excretory Function

I'm not sure why the article states the following:

"The urethra has an excretory function in both genders to pass urine to the outside"

While I understand the underlying message of what is being conveyed, this statement is technically incorrect; the urethra per se has no excretory function, any more than the esophagus has a digestive function or the dura a nervous function. Could I suggest something like:

"The urethra augments kidney excretory function by allowing urine to pass from storage in the bladder to outside"

??

Mcanty 17:12, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant double function design

also a reproductive function in the male

Where did they ever come up with this brilliant body part saving design?! I would have never thought of it myself. There should be a link to a separate article about body parts that can do multiple functions, like the nose: smell + breathe, I suppose, etc. ... and how they got that way. Jidanni 04:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article should cover more of the evolution - in general, the sexual anatomy of vertebrates is a classic case of something that would be rather awkward design, imposed by a long and convoluted history. Understand that the human is in origin something like a worm, perhaps similar to a polychaete (perhaps not), with a kidney in every segment - but all the segments have run together. A few things remain of them, like the nephrostome, which divides the sheltered internal fluid of the animal from the harsh seawater outside. Originally the waste would presumably filter into the internal fluid and leak out the nephrostome, and the gonads would sit inside the sheltered cavity so that the gametes could meet and perhaps the larvae could get a start there. But eventually some of the rearmost tubules from the nephrostome outward are gathered up into the body as a rectum (hindgut), part of which in turn is partitioned into bladder, and as much of the kidney is degenerated in embryo and the rest connects through from one segment to the next, you end up with this common tubule. But the gonad always and forever stays close to the kidney. Even though females have a different set of Müllerian ducts than the male which just uses a specialized part of the embryonic kidney, the overall geometry is not so different. So it all makes sense in a way, when you consider that once people were just simple animals folding in a sheet of cells to make the first coelom. Wnt (talk) 07:09, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

male amatomy

Why isnt there a male anotomy section if there is a female there should be a males!!!--71.233.119.59 (talk) 01:43, 26 June 2008 (UTC)Me[reply]

I concur. I would gladly supplement this article, as there are differences anatomically and functionally between the male urethra and the female urethra. --Animeronin (talk) 05:48, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pre-prostatic urethra/Intramural urethra

Just wanted to open a discussion about the best term to use for this section of the urethra. I have always used the term pre-prostatic and created the separate article on it under that name ( and have now redirected intramural to there too). I conducted a very quick and unscientific search on google and found that the name seems to be used roughly equally between the two terms. Just interested in a discussion on this as it has been changed to intramural on this page, but there seems to be no particular reason for this, especially if the terms are used interchangeably. I have no great problem with it being changed, but maybe it would be nice to be consistent and have a good reason for consistency. Astrojon (talk) 21:50, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Different names and subdivisions of urethra

Other sources divide the urethra differently eg Bulbar_urethral_necrosis#Description says "The bulbar urethra is a segment of the male urethra that is in between the penile urethra and the membrano-prostatic urethra". Is there a change with time, or geography, or medical speciality?
Urinary system says "prostatic, membranous, bulbar, and penile urethra"
other articles refer to posterior urethra. Could define here ? - Rod57 (talk) 19:19, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Does the circumcised penis tip count as a diseasily transmissible surface?

Like what if you cuddle naked afterwards? Or have oral if you know you have no diseases?

Orphaned references in Urethra

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Urethra's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "PerrinWursig2009":

From Baculum: William F. Perrin; Bernd Wursig; J. G.M. Thewissen (26 February 2009). Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals. Academic Press. pp. 68–. ISBN 978-0-08-091993-5.
From Penis: William F. Perrin; Bernd Wursig; J. G.M. Thewissen (26 February 2009). Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals. Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-08-091993-5. Retrieved 28 June 2013.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 21:49, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Lab grown urethra

I think it should be noted in the article that the scientists managed to grow urethra into laboratory and they successfully implanted them into patient's bodies. BBC, 8 March 2011 - Time.com, March 08, 2011. — Ark25 (talk) 14:10, 30 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Epithelial types of urethra

This NCBI article (Histology, Male Urethra), updated July 2020 as of this writing, may potentially supersede or augment some info in this wiki article. See the "Microscopy Light" section on proximal and distal epithelial types, most notably the distal type. I do not have access to the sources cited for male and female urethra epithelia cited, so I cannot effectively check this out myself. The NCBI article is fairly brief, so this could be a case of different levels of detail--perhaps someone can figure this out! — Preceding unsigned comment added by GottaHaveThatXylem (talk • contribs) 20:00, 31 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Urethra length is wrong for males

It is not 18-20 cm it varies a lot more, and it varies even in the same individual, because during erection it can be up to double the length. This is important because medical equipment is based on this alleged size, but it is easily disproven entirely if you look at penis size variation, men with longer penises have longer urethra, and penises varies a lot more than 2 cm, so obviously the variation is much larger. it is in fact meaningless to talk about a fixed length when the penis in an individual varies a lot depending on factors as temperaturer and sexual excitement. 212.97.249.91 (talk) 23:50, 3 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

flat vs round cross-section of empty urethra?

It is my belief that the urethra, or part of it, collapses into a flat ribbon with no internal volume at the end of urination, expelling all urine beyond the sphincter. Thus it may be the only vessel in the human body that is flat/empty rather than round in the relaxed state. Can someone confirm this, with a reference? Eaberry (talk) 18:53, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A 'flat ribbon' isn't what I'd describe the relaxed urethra as looking like under the microscope, although it isn't round either; more of an irregularly collapsed tube. But that's original research and not something I could find in a usable reference on a quick search. Maybe somebody else can do better than I? Anaxial (talk) 19:48, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]