 Little is known about patients with scan negative CES and nothing is known about their outcome. Our two studies in Edinburgh found basic clinical and demographic characteristics could not distinguish scan positive and scan negative groups 1,2. However, on the basis of clinical experience, and now prospective pilot data, the investigators hypothesise that many of these patients have either an acute functional disorder or, in some cases, sacral nerve damage not seen on imaging but detectable on anal sphincter EMG. Functional disorders, also called psychogenicnon-organic disorders, refer to genuinely experienced physical symptoms which can be positively identified as not related to underlying neurological disease3. Finding out about the diagnosis of patients with scan negative CES would enable them to access treatment and improve their outcome as well as creating better service provision for them in the long term. There is also limited data on long term outcome in patients with scan positive CES and a wish for knowledge from the medical community about what the priorities for patients with scan positive CES are after discharge. The investigators have called the study subsection Back or Leg pain with Bladder symptoms BLB study because this most accurately describes the symptoms patients have and we know that describing something negatively to patients e.g. medically unexplained symptomsis found by patients to be unhelpful. 