The Evaluation of the Factors Affecting Physicians Management of Urinary Tract Infections in Children

• Main Authors: Özge SERÇE, Mustafa BAKIR
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bilimsel Tip Yayinevi 2014-03-01
• Series: Flora Infeksiyon Hastalıkları ve Klinik Mikrobiyoloji Dergisi
• Subjects: Child; Physicians; Urinary tract infections
• Online Access: http://www.floradergisi.org/getFileContent.aspx?op=REDPDF&file_name=2014-19-01-018-024.pdf

Introduction: If urinary tract infection (UTI) is not treated timely and appropriately, it affects life quality by long-term complications. Therefore, it is important to be informed on the physicians’ management of UTI. The pediatricians’, family physicians’, and general practitioners’ clinical management of UTI in children and the factors influencing these managements were investigated in this study. Materials and Methods: The questionnaire was formed by the demographic characteristics of the physicians, foresights of the parents’ antibiotic expectation, case reports reflecting UTI, and antibiotic choice of the physicians. In order to present the independent effect of each factor influencing the management of UTI, the responses collected from the physicians working in different regions of the country were evaluated by multivariate analyses. Results: 1477 of the questionnaires were responded. The physicians declared that 29.8% preferred prescribing antibiotics without urine culture collection; 48.2% preferred collecting culture with urine bags before prescribing antibiotics for the case report presented with fever and pyuria. Being a pediatric assistant, working in the medical faculty or training and research hospital, working as a physician for less than 10 years, prescribing antibiotics to less than half of the daily patients, and spending more than 10 minutes in physical examination were determined as the factors related to the appropriate approach to UTI. Family physicians displayed a more appropriate approach than general practitioners did. Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (44.6%) and cefuroxime (36.9%) were the most preferred antibiotics. Conclusion: Spending enough time with patients and being in active education process were related with appropriate management of UTIin children in outpatient visits.