Editorial method

What we cover, and what we leave alone

We write about one condition and the territory immediately around it. Inside that territory we try to be thorough: the classification, the diagnostic pathway, the treatment evidence, the parts of daily life the condition actually touches, and the vocabulary you need in order to follow a consultation. Outside it we publish nothing, because keeping a page accurate costs more effort than writing it did, and a publisher who cannot afford that upkeep should not have written the page.

Three things fall outside the scope by rule rather than by choice of topic: anything that constitutes advice to an individual, anything that would require clinical judgement we do not possess, and anything we cannot support from a public source a reader could check themselves.

Where the material comes from

Every substantive claim begins with a source, not with a draft that is later decorated with citations. In practice that means a note starts as a reading list and becomes prose afterwards.

• Clinical practice guidelines from recognised professional bodies carry the most weight, and in urology that means principally the European Association of Urology and the American Urological Association.
• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses come next, since they summarise a field rather than a single experiment.
• Patient-facing material from national health institutions is used to check that our plain wording has not drifted from the accepted explanation.
• Single studies are used sparingly, only for narrow points, and are always labelled as single studies rather than quietly promoted into consensus.

When two sources of similar standing disagree, we say so in the text rather than picking the one that reads better. When guidance differs between countries — which on this subject it sometimes does — we note the difference instead of flattening it into a single answer. The full ranking, and the categories of material we never draw on, are set out under the order we trust sources in.

How uncertainty is written

A good deal of what is known about chronic pelvic pain is provisional, and writing that hides this is both easier to read and much less useful. Our rule is that the strength of a claim in the text has to match the strength of the evidence behind it, even where that makes a sentence clumsy.

So a treatment supported by consistent trial data is described as supported; one with mixed results is described as mixed, with a word about why the results conflict; and one resting on habit and plausibility is described as exactly that. Where no treatment has been established as a reliable cure, as is the case for the chronic pain form, we say so directly and repeatedly rather than once in small print. We would rather a reader closed a page thinking nobody is certain than thinking something we cannot support.

What we will not publish

Some of these refusals are matters of law and policy, and some are simply ours. We do not distinguish between the two in practice.

• A named medicine, a dose, a frequency, or anything else that reads as a prescription.
• An offer to sell, supply, import or arrange any medicine, supplement, test, device or medical service.
• A diagnosis, an answer to an individual medical question, or advice tailored to one person's circumstances.
• Guaranteed outcomes, miracle claims, before-and-after stories, or testimonials we have no way of verifying.
• Anything likely to discourage a reader from seeking professional care, or from completing something they have been prescribed.
• Sponsored writing, paid placement, or an advertisement dressed as independent editorial.

Authorship, and the edge of our competence

Notes are written and checked by the Alderbury editorial team: writers experienced in health communication, working from the sources above. None of them is a practising clinician, and we claim no clinical review where none has taken place. We are explicit about this because an unverifiable claim of clinical authorship is one of the most common ways a health site borrows standing it has not earned.

If that changes — if we commission review from a named, credentialled clinician — the reviewer's name, qualifications and review date will appear on the page they reviewed, and this section will be rewritten accordingly. Nothing less specific than that counts.

Review and updating

A health page is a perishable object. Ours are dated on the assumption that you will check the date.

• Every note carries a “last updated” line, and every source list records the month those links were last opened.
• Notes are reviewed at least annually, and sooner whenever the underlying guidance is revised.
• A correction that changes the meaning of a health statement is made promptly and reflected in the update line.
• Typography, punctuation and dead links are fixed without ceremony and without a note.
• A page we can no longer keep accurate is rewritten or withdrawn. It is not left standing to rot quietly.

Commercial independence

The site is funded by its owner and by nobody else. Most of the pressure that deforms health writing never arrives here, because the arrangements that normally carry it do not exist:

• No advertising is displayed on any page, in any format, from any network.
• No space is sold, rented or exchanged, at any price and on any terms.
• No outside party may commission, review, approve or amend what we publish, and no note exists because a company wished it into being.
• No affiliate commission is accepted on a medicine, supplement, device, test or clinical service, and no affiliate link to one appears anywhere here.
• If a commercial relationship capable of bending our judgement ever arose, we would disclose it on the funding section and on every page it touched.

The short list of what is recorded when you visit is in the data notice.

Accessibility and plain language

We aim for pages that can be read without specialist knowledge and used with assistive technology: headings in a sensible order, link text that still makes sense when read out of context, adequate colour contrast, keyboard-reachable navigation, and no meaning carried by colour alone. Clinical terms are explained where they first appear and collected in the word list. If any part of this site is unusable for you, tell us what you were trying to do and we will fix it.

Corrections and complaints

To report an inaccuracy, a statement that has aged badly, a source we have misread or a broken link, write to [email protected] with the address of the page and, if you have one, the source that supports the correction. We aim to reply within five working days. If you believe something here falls short of a recognised health-information standard, say which standard and why, and we will assess the page against this document and act on what we find.