Staying with the topic of urine… investigators at University of Pittsburgh have derived and validated a UTI risk calculator for patients aged 2-23 months. The calculator (UTICalc) is linked from the On Shift page of PEMsource under the heading Neonatal / Infant, and can be found at https://uticalc.pitt.edu/

The study by Shaikh et al was published online on April 16, 2018 at JAMA pediatrics here. Some highlights: derived on consecutive 2-23mo old febrile patients evaluated in ED for UTI, 542 with UTI and 1144 matched controls without UTI. Validated on a dataset of 380 patients, 30 with UTI. Investigators estimate sensitivity of UTICalc at 95-100% and state that use of the calculator results in approximately 10 patients tested for every 1 UTI found; UTICalc outperformed the current AAP algorithm in both of these outcomes. Users can also enter urinalysis dip, micro, and gram stain results to obtain post-test probabilities. Investigators suggest testing when pre-test probability is 2% or higher, and treating when post-test probability is 5% or higher.

Further validation is warranted, but UTICalc may be useful in shared decision making with parents to give a ballpark risk estimate.