Kidney Size in Normal Children Measured by Sonography

Abstract

Kidney length and depth were measured by sonography in 46 normal children fro 0 to 16 years of age. Sonography was used to obtain kidney measurements without the known magnification caused by factors of chemical and photographic nature seen by urography. The results of our study were used to control the age-adapted equipment for renography in children. There was a good correlation between kidney length and depth and variables like age, weight, height and body surface area. The best values were found in the correlations to body surface area. We could confirm the previous findings by other methods of kidney size measurements in children that there is no significant difference in kidney length between boys and girls. The left kidney is slightly longer than the right one and the kidney centre distance is slightly but significantly larger on the left side. No such difference was present in the distance skin to kidney surface.

Sonographic standards for normal infant kidney length

“…Some of these studies used the child's age for standardizing kidney length [2,3]. As recognized in the literature and corroborated by our study, better predictions of renal length have been obtained with a body measurement such as height, weight, or surface area [4]. We all see children of the same age with greatly varying overall size.…”

“…Previous studies analyzing renal size on sonography have four major problems [2][3][4][5][6]. Some of these studies used the child's age for standardizing kidney length [2,3].…”

“…This measurement is more cumbersome for the clinician and radiologist, and rather than deal with this cumbersome measurement, most sonographers ignore the standards. Most of the studies of children include very few infants in proportion to the number of children [4,6]. The extrapolation of standards for the older child to infants (children under 1 year) is not accurate.…”

Kidney dimensions in ultrasound compared to somatometric parameters in normal children

“…Close correlation between kidney length and BL (crown-to heel length) and between the PEV and bodyweight was found. No significant differences between males and females have been found [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11].…”

“…The measurements included morphometric data such as length, width, depth, parenchymal thickness and a calculated volume [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. These parameters were correlated to age, body length (BL), body weight (BW) and bodysurf ace.…”