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Kidney Infection – Explaining
Kidney Infection requires prompt medical attention. Appropriately treated, kidney pollution can permanently damage your kidneys or the bacteria can spread to your bloodstream and cause a life-threatening illness.
Causes of Kidney Infection
Bacteria entering your urinary tract through the tube that transports urine from your body (urethra) can grow and travel to your kidneys. This is the most mutual cause of kidney infections.
Most kidney infections need quick treatment with antibiotics to stop the disease from damaging the kidneys or spreading to the bloodstream.
You may also need painkillers.
Suppose you’re especially vulnerable to the effects of an infection, for example. In that case, if you have a long-term health condition or are pregnant, you may be admitted to the hospital and treated with antibiotics through a drip. Most people diagnosed and treated promptly with antibiotics feel ultimately better after about two weeks. People who are older or have underlying situations may take longer to recover.
Although it’s unusual to develop kidney pollution, it can happen — for instance, if you have an artificial joint or heart valve that becomes infected. Bacteria from an infection away in your body also can feast over your flow to your kidneys. Rarely, kidney infection results after kidney surgery.
Risk Factors
Pregnant women are at a level higher risk of a kidney infection. It is being female. The urethra is quicker in females than in men, making it calmer for bacteria to travel from outside the body to the bladder. The nearness of the urethra to the vagina and anus also creates more opportunities for bacteria to enter the bladder. Once in the bladder, an infection can feast to the kidneys.
You are having a urinary tract blockage. This includes whatever slows the flow of urine or decreases your ability to empty your bladder when urinating — including a kidney stone, somewhat abnormal in your urinary tract’s structure or, in men, an enlarged prostate gland.
I have a weakened immune system. This includes medical situations that impair your immune systems, such as diabetes and HIV. Sure medications, such as drugs taken to prevent transplanted organs, have a similar effect. You are having damage to nerves around the bladder. Nerve or back cord damage can block the sensations of a bladder infection so that you’re unaware when it’s advancing to a kidney infection.
Factors that Growth Your Risk of a kidney Infection Include:
Using a urinary catheter for a time. Urinary tubes are tubes used to drain urine from the bladder. You have a catheter placed during and after surgical procedures and analytic exams. You might use one unceasingly if you’re confined to a bed.
They have a condition that causes urine to flow the wrong way. In vesicoureteral reflux, small amounts of urine flow from your bladder back up into your ureters and kidneys. People with this condition are at higher risk of kidney infection during childhood and adulthood.
Complications
If left untreated, a kidney infection can lead to potentially serious complications, such as:
Kidney scarring. This can lead to chronic kidney disease, high blood pressure and kidney failure.
Blood poisoning. Your kidneys filter waste from your blood and return your filtered blood to the rest of your body. Having a kidney infection can cause the bacteria to spread through your bloodstream.
Pregnancy complications. Women who develop a kidney infection during pregnancy may have an increased risk of delivering low birth weight babies.
Symptoms of Kidney Infection
A kidney infection is a painful and unpleasant illness usually caused by cystitis, a common bladder infection. Most people with cystitis will not get a kidney infection, but occasionally the bacteria can travel up from the bladder into one or both kidneys.
If treated with antibiotics straight away, a kidney infection does not cause serious harm, although you’ll feel very unwell. If a kidney infection is not treated, it can worsen and sometimes cause permanent kidney damage.
Symptoms in children
Children with a kidney infection may have the following symptoms:
- smelly pee
- blood in their pee
- wetting the bed
- a high temperature and feeling unwell (they may complain of tummy ache)
- being sick and not feeding well
- A child younger than 2 with a kidney infection may only have a high temperature, without any other apparent symptoms.
Treatment of Kidney Infection
Your treatment will depend on the severity of your kidney infection.
Your doctor will prescribe antibiotic pills for you to take at home. If the infection is mild, oral antibiotics are the first line of treatment. The antibiotic may change once the results of your urine tests are known to be something more specific to your bacterial infection.
Usually, you’ll need to continue taking antibiotics for two or more weeks. Your doctor may prescribe follow-up urine cultures after your treatment to ensure the infection is gone and has not returned. If necessary, you may get another course of antibiotics.
Your doctor may keep you in the hospital to receive intravenous antibiotics and intravenous fluids for a more severe infection. Sometimes surgery may be necessary to correct a blockage or complex shape in your urinary tract. This will help prevent new kidney infections.
Recovery
You should feel better within a few days of taking antibiotics. Be sure to finish the entire course of antibiotics the doctor prescribed so that your infection doesn’t return, however—the usual method of antibiotics in two weeks.
History of UTIs may put you at risk for future kidney infections.
To relieve discomfort from the infection:
Use a heating pad on your stomach or back to help reduce pain.
Take over-the-counter (OTC) pain medication, such as acetaminophen (Tylenol). Your doctor may also prescribe pain medication if OTC medications don’t help your symptoms.
Drink 6-8 eight-ounce glasses of water a day. This will help flush out the bacteria in your urinary tract. Coffee and alcohol might increase your need to urinate.
Complications
If your infection is untreated or poorly treated, there can be severe complications:
You may permanently damage your kidneys, leading to chronic kidney disease or, rarely, kidney failure. Bacteria from your kidneys could poison your bloodstream, causing life-threatening sepsis. You may develop renal scarring or high blood pressure, but this is rare. If you’re pregnant and have a kidney infection, this increases your baby’s risk of low weight.
Conclusion
If you’re in good health, you should recover from a kidney infection without complications. It’s essential to see your doctor at the first signs of a kidney infection so that treatment can start right away. That can help reduce your risk for complications.
