Vesicoureteral Reflux
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When Lizzie was 6 weeks old, she wasn’t nursing well, and seemed really sleepy. It seemed strange, but it didn’t seem like anything too unusual for a baby. That evening her temperature spiked, and she was taken by ambulance to the nearest Children’s Hospital. In what seemed like a moment, our lives were changed.
After almost a week in the hospital, she was diagnosed with bilateral grade 5 Vesicoureteral Reflux in a duplicated collecting system. The first question is…. What in the world is vesicoureteral reflux, and what does it mean?
Vesicoureteral Reflux (VUR) is also known as kidney reflux, or bladder reflux. There are two kinds of reflux. Primary VUR affects 90% of children diagnosed with this condition. In Primary VUR, children are born with a defect in the ureterovesical junction. Because of this defect, there is an abnormal flow of urine from the bladder back into the kidneys, where it can cause damage. The other type of VUR is Secondary reflux. It has the same abnormal flow of urine, but is caused secondary to an underlying condition such as nuerogenic bladder, immunity disorders, or other conditions.
We were told that Lizzie had Primary VUR, and that it was bilateral, which means that it affects both ureters. One of the many unique things about Lizzie is that instead of having 2 ureters like most people, she has 4 (I’ll be writing about a duplicated system in a later blog). We were also told that the grade was 5, which is the highest.
For more information, you can click on the following:
Symptoms of VUR, Grades of VUR, Testing for VUR, Treatment of VUR
