Cohort study of bacterial species causing urinary tract infection and urinary tract abnormalities in children

Children with urinary tract infection often have anatomical or functional abnormalities in their urinary tract. Imaging studies are therefore recommended, especially for young children, after the first urinary tract infection.1–3 There is, however, considerable variation in clinical practice and some resistance to diagnostic imaging for childhood urinary tract infection.4 We conducted this study to find out whether an association exists between the bacterial species causing the first urinary tract infection and abnormal findings in subsequent imaging studies. We examined retrospectively the hospital records of all children with a positive urine culture from a sample obtained by suprapubic aspiration (any growth) or catheterisation (growth of at least 103 colony forming units/ml) during January 1980 to December 1994. Asymptomatic children and those who had been in hospital for more than 2 days before the specimen was obtained …