Children 'must not wait for loo'

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Parents must heed children's sometimes inconvenient demands for the toilet to stop them developing urinary tract infections, guidelines say.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has drawn up new guidance for treating a condition which can lead to severe kidney damage.

It is providing fresh advice for doctors, but it also wants parents to be more aware of UTIs in children.

Learning to hold urine in is thought to be one of the causes of infection.

Children, according to NICE, should "no longer be expected to wait".

Specialist referrals

An estimated 82,000 children develop the condition each year.

Under the new guidelines, all infants younger than three months with a suspected UTI should be referred immediately to a paediatric specialist and treated with intravenous antibiotics, and specialist referral should also be considered for those older.

Signs that a child may have a UTI include needing to go the toilet frequently, pain when they go, tummy pain and unpleasant smelling urine.

This may be accompanied by more general symptoms such as fever, vomiting, tiredness and irritability, and these are what parents and doctors should look for in infants and very young children who cannot explain the kind of discomfort they are in.

Babies and children who have an unexplained fever of 38 degrees or higher should have a urine sample tested within 24 hours.

"UTIs in children can be both distressing for the child and worrying for the parents, especially where a young child or baby is affects," said NICE's chief excutive Andrew Dillon.

"These guidelines will help improve the management of UTIs in children and babies by providing a handy guide to help health professionals diagnose the infection, outlining the treatment which should be offered first."