Sonographic determination of renal volumes in normal neonates

Abstract

Renal diseases that affect renal size without altering renal architecture require a quantitative means of detection. A prospective study was undertaken to establish normal values for renal volumes in healthy neonates using sonography. Volumes were determined by two methods; (1) the serial area-volume method using parallel transverse images; and (2) the prolate ellipsoid model of the kidney using orthogonal diameters taken from ultrasound images. Renal volumes for both the right and left kidneys in both sexes were found to be approximately 10 ml. There was no significant difference between the results obtained by either method, nor were there significant differences between the volumes of the right and left kidneys within either sex. No difference in renal volume was noted between sexes. The mean greatest renal length was also computed for right and left kidneys in both sexes. Knowledge of normal renal volumes may aid in the diagnosis of urinary system disorders in neonates.

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].…”

“…The equation from that study, 4.98 + 0.1 55 x age (month), generally overestimates the renal length in our sample [2]. Two of the previous studies predicted renal volume, a more complicated measurement of kidney size than length [3,5]. This measurement is more cumbersome for the clinician and radiologist, and rather than deal with this cumbersome measurement, most sonographers ignore the standards.…”

“…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].…”

Determination of Kidney Length and Volume by Ultrasound in 100 Term Bangladeshi Newborn

“…Lotus and others made a similar observation of the independence of renal length of gender in their study conducted o Chinese children 9 , Komus and colleagues 20 , in their study on Turkish children and Adeyekum and colleagues also noted a similar trend, in Nigerian children 19 . The volume of kidney was also some what lowers than the others data which was 10cc 21 in comparisons to 9.79 to 9.82 cc in our series, but due to scanty information about the volume of term baby.…”

Kidney growth curves in healthy children from the third trimester of pregnancy until the age of two years. The Generation R Study

“…Some studies found no difference [29,30], whereas others have suggested the left kidney to be larger [31,32]. Most consistent findings have been reported for kidney length, for which the left kidney seems to be longer than the right [7,25,26,31,33].…”