Urinary Trait Infection

A mother brings her 4-year-old daughter concerned about a possible urinary tract infection. She reports her child has had three prior episodes of urinary tract infection in the last 15 months. The mother states that she had problems when she was a child. Urinary tract infections are generally common among children and can pose severe bacterial infection during childhood (Kaufman, Temple-Smith & Sanci, 2019). Therefore, early diagnosis and treatment of the condition is critical to help improve a child’s condition and lessen the significant economic burden it brings to the healthcare system. Diagnosis of this condition entails examining a patient’s family and medical history. Since the mother has indicated she had problems when she was child, the diagnosis would require collecting additional information regarding her family history. This would help establish whether the child’s condition is associated with a genetic predisposition (Leung et al., 2019). It is also important to obtain the child’s past medical history to understand treatment measures adopted to help manage previous episodes of the condition.

Following the diagnosis, the child can also be diagnosed with other conditions depending on insights obtained from patient history and physical examination. Some of the two differential diagnoses for the child’s condition include asymptomatic bacteriuria and urinary calculi. Depending on the severity of her symptoms and results of her physical examination, the child’s treatment plan could entail the use of medications and other therapies. IV antibiotics could be administered in different dosages and duration depending on her age and severity of the symptoms. These medications are administered as part of prompt antibiotic therapy since she is symptomatic. In addition, the child will be instructed to never hold urine to the last minute and take time to completely void herself. The mother will be advised to ensure the child has adequate fluid intake.

References

Kaufman, J., Temple-Smith, M. & Sanci, L. (2019, September 12). Urinary Tract Infections in Children: An Overview of Diagnosis and Management. BMJ Paediatrics Open, 3, 1-9.

Leung, A.K.C., Wong, A.H.C., Leung, A.A.M. & Hon, K.L. (2019, May). Urinary Tract Infection in Children. Recent Patents on Inflammation & Allergy Drug Discovery, 13(1), 2-18.