RESUMO
Urinary tract infection [UTI] is relatively a common cause of fever in infants and young children. False negative diagnosis will leave UTI patients at risk for serious complications, while false positive one may lead to unnecessary invasive testing and expensive treatment. In order to find UTI prevalence in febrile Egyptian infants and children and to evaluate the role of urine analysis and culture and renal sonography in UTI diagnosis, we studied 200 cases with fever for <48hs after excluding those with clinically detectable cause, other than UTI, for the fever. The overall UTI prevalence in febrile infants and children was 7.5%. It was higher in females than in males and in uncircumcised than in circumcised males. UTI symptoms in neonates and infants were not specific and older children had urinary symptoms highly associated with UTI. E.coli was the commonest causative organism for UTI. Our work showed that UTI is an important cause in febrile Egyptian infants and children so that we strongly recommend further studies on best cost - effective management of these patients