Guidance
This guideline covers diagnosing and managing first or recurrent upper or lower tract urinary tract infection in infants, children and young people. It aims to achieve more consistent clinical practice, based on accurate diagnosis and effective management.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- investigations and diagnosis
- acute management
- imaging tests
- surgical intervention
- follow-up
- information and advice for children, young people and parents or carers
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners
- Infants and children from birth up to the age of 16 years with urinary tract infection, their families and carers
Is this guideline up to date?
We checked this guideline in July 2016 and we are updating the recommendations on diagnosis – urine testing. See the guideline in development page for progress on the update.
Next review: 2019
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline was previously called urinary tract infection in children: diagnosis, treatment and long-term management.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or service users. The application of the recommendations in this guideline is not mandatory and the guideline does not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
Local commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients or service users wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.