misdiagnosis?

[Guest guest]

Hello all,

My daughter is eight years old. She was diagnosed with in

September of 2004 by a pediatric rheumotologist from Philadelphia

after about six months of symptoms. Subsequent episodes responded

well to prednisone. In July of 2005 she got a particularly high

fever (105.5) that barely (if at all) responded to the prednisone.

It actually involved vomiting for the first time, which her ped

rheumo then said made it not a episode. Her primary doctor

sent her for blood tests and urine culture. Her urine work came back

positive, despite her having no symptoms (no pain while urinating,

no pressure etc). We then went to a pediatric urologist. He sent her

for a VCUG test (this is where they fill the bladder with a liquid

that they can then watch to see where it goes when she urinates) and

found that she had Vesicoureteric Reflux grade four (out of six).

This basically means that whenever she urinated, some of it leaked

out of her bladder towards the kidney. This required corrective

surgery (reattached the tube at the bladder that came from the

kidney). According to the ped uro, she has always had this condition

(sometimes it's caught in the ultrasound in utero!!) and that she

has some scarring of a kidney and one is slightly larger than the

other.

She hasn't had a episode since before the operation, and

we're wondering (and hoping of course) that the diagnosis was

wrong, and that it was asymptomatic kidney and/or bladder infections

that were the cause of the fevers. The ped uro said this was a

possibility as well. I'm sharing this with you folks on the outside

chance that your child may have the same thing (girls more likely

than boys). Again, she never had symptoms of kidney/bladder/urinary

tract infections and it was only the fact that the urine culture

happen to come back positive that we even went down this road. If

anyone has had similar experiences or has questions let me know.

Ken