Percutaneous Renal Biopsy in Egyptian Children: A Five-year Single-Center Experience

Abstract

Ultrasound-guided percutaneous renal biopsy (PRB) stands as an important tool of diagnostic and prognostic value, besides its role in determining the best therapeutic option in some diseases. The advance in medicine over the past years made PRB safer and more feasible. This is an observational retrospective study in a tertiary referral center of pediatric nephrology and was conducted to determine both the indications and the histopathological findings of renal biopsies performed in pediatric patients. The retrospective review of 73 files searching for gender, age, indication for renal biopsy, and histopathological diagnosis of biopsy was done. The statistical analysis was done using Microsoft Excel Worksheet version 2010. The files of 73 cases were reviewed, of which three were excluded due to inadequate sample (success rate of 95.9%). The mean age was 6.9 years (standard deviation ±3.51) with a male-to-female ratio of 1.8:1. The main indication for PRB was nephrotic syndrome (NS) (40%) mainly steroid-resistant NS. Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis was found in most of the cases (46.4%) followed by minimal change disease (32.1%). Among secondary glomerulonephritis, lupus nephritis (LN) was the most common indication (15.7%). Class IV LN came at the top of the list (45.5%). Poststreptococcal GN patients were biopsied when rapidly progressive GN was suspected. Immunoglobulin A nephropathy was found in only 1.4%. Other PRB indications were hematuria (8.6%), unexplained acute (2.9%), or chronic renal failure (4.3%). Renal biopsy remains to be a mainstay diagnostic tool in pediatric nephrology. This study confirms the reliability of PRB as a diagnostic tool which can probably impact the management and hence improve the outcome. The findings in our patients align with findings from other centers and differ in others denoting that disease distribution can vary from one place to another.