[Diagnostic and therapeutic significance of percutaneous nephrostomy in children].

During the period from April 1986 to March 1988 on the Pediatric Clinic in Belgrade a total of 12 percutaneous nephrotomies were performed to relieve obstruction of the upper urinary tract. The youngest patient was a two-month old with giant hydronephrosis, and the oldest was a 12-year old girl with an acute kidney obstruction caused by impaction of wedging the poured off stone. The most common reasons for obstruction of the upper urinary tract were congenital stenoses and postoperative scars, urethrocystoneostomia and pyeloplasty. The most frequent clinical manifestations in patients on whom nephrotomy was carried out as an emergency operation were infection, palpable tumor (cyst) and acute kidney insufficiency. Percutaneous nephrostomy was always performed with basal sedation and local infiltrative anesthesia under X-ray control. Surgery was necessary in all cases, but no complications needing surgical intervention occurred. Mild hematuria can be expected at almost every punction, so it should not be treated as a complication. Dislocation of the nephrostoma catheter immediately after surgery can be a complication which necessitates reintervention, but if this happens after more than ten days, the catheter can easily be replaced through the formed fistulous channel. In one case percutaneous placing of the catheter was not possible, so it was placed surgically in the kidney and skin to enable drainage of the infected urinome a month after rupture of the ureteropyelic segment. Percutaneous placing of a catheter through the nephrostoma is the method of choice for urgent and temporary relief of obstructions of the upper urinary system regardless of etiology, and this procedure achieves immediate therapeutic and, if necessary, diagnostic effect which enables recovery of the patient and preparation for definitive surgery which in such a situation could be hazardous.