Pattern of IVU among patients presenting with flank pain at a tertiary hospital in Rivers State

Background: Intravenous urography (IVU) is a contrast based radiological procedure for the investigation and imaging of the urinary system. It was the gold standard, not until the last two decades when CTU (computed tomography urography) took over. The latter is better because of its improved accuracy in the diagnosis of urinary tract pathologies. Flank pain is a sensation of discomfort or distress in the part of the body below the rib and above the ilium. The possible organs in the flank to be affected include kidney and ureter.

Aim This study is aimed at finding out the IVU findings in patients presenting with flank pain in a tertiary hospital in the southern part of Nigeria.

Study design and settings: A retrospective study was conducted in the Radiology Department of Rivers State University Teaching Hospital (RSUTH) from 1st February 2021 to 10th February 2023.

Data Analysis: Data was analyzed using SPSS 20.1 version. The level of statistical significance was set at p<0.05.

Results: A total of 100 data was analyzed. Patients between the age of 5 years and 76 years with a mean age of 39.72 + 14.33 years was used for this study. Majority of the age group was greater than 41years of age with an equal male to female distribution. That is the ratio of female to male in this study is 1:1. The study shows that more patients had abnormal IVU patterns than normal. More females had normal IVU patterns while abnormal IVU patterns were more common in males. The study also shows that the ureters were more affected than the kidneys because we had more abnormal IVU pattern in the ureter than the kidney.

Conclusion: The age group with the highest abnormal IVU pattern is the greater than 41years group, probably because they were more in number in the study population and again may be, we can say the frequency of diseases increases with increasing age.