Publication:

Study of urinary tract infection in febrile children below 2 years of age

Background Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) in age group 0-2 years is of special interest to clinicians and assumes importance as it can lead to pyelonephritis, septicemia or meningitis in newborn and infants which can be fatal. This study is undertaken to calculate the incidence of UTI in febrile children less than 2 years of age and to compare the incidence with afebrile children visiting pediatric OPD and IPD of SRMS IMS.

Methods Two hundred and two febrile infants and children constituted the case group. A control group, constituted of one hundred and ninety seven, age and sex matched afebrile patients from IPD/OPD. Urine collected was subjected to microscopic and microbiological examination.

Results There were ten cases of UTI in the study group and none was found in the control group. The overall incidence of UTI in febrile infants and children less than 2 years was 4.95%. Infants and children admitted with diagnosis other than UTI were screened for UTI and it was found in 4.6% of the cases whereas babies admitted without definite focus had an incidence of 5.56% which signifies that UTI should be screened in all febrile infants irrespective of their other etiologies of fever. Maternal illiteracy was found to be statistically significant as 5 out of 10 cases of UTI were associated with illiterate mothers.

Conclusions In the present study, we found that the screening of the infants for identification of UTI is useful irrespective of the presence of other etiologies thus early initiation of treatment prevents most complications of UTI, so the importance of early diagnosis cannot be overemphasized.