Evaluation of the Bladder Stimulation, a Non-invasive Technique of Urine Collection, in Infant Less Than 6 Months to Diagnose Urinary Tract Infection: a Randomized Multicenter Study

Urinary tract infection (UTI) is common in infants and needs to be diagnosed quickly. The risk for urinary tract infection before the age of 2 years is about 1-4% in boys and 3-8% in girls. A delay in diagnosis exposes to severe complications. In infants, the symptoms are not specific. A good urinalysis quality is therefore necessary for the diagnosis of UTI. Different techniques exist to collect urine samples in these children who do not control their urination yet: supra pubic aspiration, catheterization, urine collection bag and clean catch urine. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends supra pubic aspiration (1-9 % bacterial contamination) and urinary catheterization (8-14 % contamination) for collecting urine but these techniques are invasive and painful. The sterile bag is a non-invasive method of urine collection, with a high bacterial contamination rates (26-62%) leading to unnecessary antibiotic treatment. Finally, clean catch urine is an accepted urine sample to diagnose UTI according to the recommendations (13-27 % of bacterial contamination) but this method is only possible for potty-trained children. Recent studies (Herreros et al, Altuntas et al, Tran et al.) have shown that bladder stimulation, which consists of pubic tapping and lumbar massage, would be a new, effective, non-invasive and safe method of collecting urine in infants.

Bladder stimulation may be performed by a nurse or a physician. The steps of the bladder stimulation technique are as follows: (a) cleaning the genital area with warm water and soap b) bladder stimulation technique, requires the presence of 3 people: infants will be held under their armpits by a parent over the bed, with legs dangling in males and hips flexed in females. The nurse or technician will then alternate between bladder stimulation maneuvers: gentle tapping in the suprapubic area at a frequency of 100 taps per minute for 30 seconds followed by lumbar paravertebral massage maneuvers for 30 seconds. These two stimulation maneuvers will be repeated until micturition begins, or for a maximum of of 3 minutes.

However, the investigators do not have data on the bacterial contamination rate for urine sample using this new technique. the investigators hypothesize that the bladder stimulation is a technique for obtaining urine with a contamination rate equivalent to those obtained by bladder catheterization, in the diagnosis of febrile urinary tract infection in infants under 6 months of age.