One in eight children who suffer a urinary tract infection will end up with scarring on their kidneys, putting them at a higher risk of kidney infection later in life. A new method could help predict these instances in a less invasive manner than common procedures.
Researchers found by looking at fever severity, type of bacteria, and kidney abnormalities via an ultrasound, these patients can be identified as accurately as in an unpleasant catheter test, HealthDay reported.
"We found that you more or less can predict the children who are at higher risk by looking at three different things when they come in," study author Dr. Nader Shaikh, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh told HealthDay.
The past common test for urinary tract complications is to use a catheter to fill a child's bladder with dye so the urine flow shows up on an X-ray. This method was extremely common in the 1960s and 1970s but doctors have been moving away from it in more recent decades.
"It's very uncomfortable, very distressing and entails a good amount of radiation," Roberts said. "It is not only not worth putting all children through that procedure, but with this study we now have information that shows it's simply not justified."
To see if there was a better method for detecting these types of infection the researchers looked at 1,280 children 18 years of age and younger.
The team found the three factors most likely to cause kidney scarring was: a fever over 102 degrees; an infection involving e. Coli bacteria; and ultrasound readings indicating kidney abnormalities.
This method predicted 45 percent of children who developed kidney scarring; a rate only between three and five less effective than the catheter method.
"Now that we know the groups at greatest risk, maybe we can come up with methods for decreasing inflammation during this infection and possibly preventing scars," Shaikh said. "We can back off the things we're doing that are distressing to children, and think about novel ways to preserve the kidneys of these children."
The findings were published online Aug. 4 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
