BMJ 1994;309:1512 (3 December)

Letters

Urinary tract infection in children

GPs may not use same criteria

EDITOR,--Linda Pead and Rosalind Maskell report the proportion of children under 12 in the population served by a public health laboratory in a relatively affluent part of Britain in whom the child's general practitioner suspected a urinary tract infection sufficiently to ask for laboratory confirmation.1 They also report the criteria used and the proportions of boys and girls. Miscellaneous imaging studies showed that an appreciable number of the children with positive findings had underlying or secondary abnormalities of the urinary tract.

What the paper does not tell us is whether general practitioners in other areas are likely to use the same clinical criteria for requesting such studies and, if they do so, whether other laboratories and imaging departments would report comparable findings; nor is it clear what fundamental questions such studies would be likely to answer. Surely what we need to know is the . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Study of urinary tract infection in children in one health district
L Pead and R Maskell
BMJ 1994 309: 631-634. [Abstract] [Full Text]

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