BMI shows no impact in outcomes of urinary tract reconstruction in teens

Obesity does not seem to affect 30-day morbidity outcomes in children and adolescents undergoing continent urinary tract reconstruction, a recent study has shown.

Researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of 182 continent reconstruction procedures performed on paediatric and adolescent patients who were, at most, 20 years of age. Primary outcomes included the duration of admission to intensive care or to the hospital, as well as complications and the need for readmissions within 30 days.

Majority of the participants (62.6 percent; n=114) were of normal body mass index (BMI), while 15.4 percent (n=28) and 13.2 percent (n=24) were obese and overweight, respectively. More than a quarter (28.6 percent; n=52) had any level of obesity, as determined by age-appropriate BMI z-scores.

Overall, participants had to spend a median of 1.0 day in intensive care and 11.0 days hospitalized. Length of hospitalization was shortest in the underweight group (10.5 days), but no significant effect was reported according to BMI groups. Median intensive care stay was the same across BMI categories.

The same was true for the overall rate of 30-day readmissions (14.3 percent; n=26). This was highest among those with normal (18.4 percent) and obese (10.7 percent) BMI and lowest in the underweight group, where no such case was reported. Among-group discrepancies failed to meet significance (p=0.06).

Complications likewise occurred at similar frequencies among BMI categories: underweight (31.3 percent), normal (45.6 percent), overweight (33.3 percent) and obese (39.3 percent; p=0.53). Disaggregating into the different types of complications did not change the principal findings.