Outcome of children with posterior urethral valves: Prognostic factors

Posterior urethral valves present with a wide spectrum of renal and bladder pathology. These changes may per-sist despite successful treatment of the primary obstruc-tion, leading to a gradual progress towards renal insf ciency. This study reviews retrospectively a series of 70 children with posterior urethral valves who pre-sented at our institute over the last 10 years, with an aim to identify the prognostic factors and help in defining the end result and implicating the correct treatment proto-col. These included age at presentation and intervention (less than or more than 2 years), recurrent urosepsis, pres-ence of vesico-ureteric reflux, renal parenchymal dam-age as seen on ultrasound, vesical dysfunction and the nadir serum creatinine level. 29% of children had renal insufficiency at the end of 3-years′ follow-up. Factors important in the progression towards renal insufficiency were evaluated. Factors found to be statistically signifi-cant with a p value < 0.05 were age at intervention more than 2 years, recurrent urosepsis, bilateral high grade vesico-ureteric reflex, bilateral parenchymal damage as seen on ultrasonography and nadir serum creatinine of more than 0.8 mg%