Liam Payne is  best known for his part in the boy band, One Direction. Now a solo artist, Payne made news recently for having to postpone his tour due to a serious kidney infection that landed the pop singer in the hospital.

A kidney infection occurs when bacteria get into your kidneys. It can affect one or both kidneys. Doctors say a kidney infection is a type of urinary tract infection (UTI).

“A UTI is essentially when bacteria make it to the urinary system,” says Maritza Estrada-O'Brien, MD, a primary care physician with OSF HealthCare. “Normally it starts from the outside world. It gets into the urethra and gets into the bladder. When it gets into the bladder, that's when we categorize it as a urinary tract infection or UTI. The problem is the longer it sits there, the more likely it is to travel to other parts of the system. It travels up the tubes and can land in the kidneys – one, both, but once it gets to that point, it causes problems.”

The symptoms range in severity from vomiting to cloudy urine.

“When patients come to see me the biggest things that I look for are fever, chills, burning with urination or going to the bathroom more often, pressure down in the pelvis or even a dull ache in the back because that's where the kidneys lie,” says Dr. Estrada-O’Brien. “But the biggest giveaways are the fever and chills, because that means this infection is more serious.”

Anyone can get a kidney infection, but those who are at the greatest risk are:

·         People with kidney issues

·         People with diabetes

·         People undergoing cancer treatment

·         Women, because women have shorter urethras, which makes it easier for the bacteria to get into the urinary tract. 

·         People who are immunocompromised

Dr. Estrada-O’Brien recommends drinking plenty of fluids to combat some of the symptoms. But if you’re not feeling better after a few days, it’s time to call your doctor.

“If it's a simple UTI where it's concentrated to the bladder and you don't have any major symptoms, its antibiotics in the office,” she says. “But once it does get to this kidney infection level, or pyelonephritis, it normally requires hospitalization, IV antibiotics, fluids, and other supportive measures just to make sure that it gets truly treated in the kidneys themselves.”

The best way to prevent kidney infection is to drink plenty of water, urinate as soon as you feel the urge, and if you are a woman wipe from front to back after going to the bathroom to help prevent bacteria from reaching the urethra. If you’re a person who develops frequent UTIs, follow up with your physician sooner than later.

“The takeaway is all about early diagnosis,” says Dr. Estrada-O’Brien. “If you notice that something is off, see your primary care doctor. It's easy enough to get a urine analysis and treat it early on before it has the chance to progress to a kidney infection. Stay well hydrated. It's very important to keep on top of those underlying medical conditions like diabetes or other issues that could make you a higher risk for kidney infections.”

 

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Hematuria, or blood in the urine, can be frightening. The cause very well could be harmless, but it could also be a sign of something more serious.

There are two types of hematuria. If you can visibly see the blood in your urine, it’s called gross hematuria. If you can’t see blood in the urine, it’s called microscopic hematuria, and can only be seen under a microscope when the urine is being tested by a lab.

Uwais Zaid, MD, is a Urologist with OSF HealthCare and Urology of St. Louis.

“Whenever there’s any blood in the urine, it’s something we take very seriously,” Dr. Zaid says.

Dr. Zaid says the first goal when treating a patient with hematuria is seeing what they’re dealing with, then deciding a course of action.

“If somebody has a tumor in the bladder, the next step is surgery to scrape that tumor off and see what we’re dealing with. Is it a bladder cancer, is it an inflammatory lesion? If someone has a kidney stone, we could potentially watch it, we could treat it surgically or watch it,” Dr. Zaid says.

The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases says gross hematuria makes your urine look pink, red, or brown. Usually gross hematuria is not painful. If you are having pain in your bladder or back, it’s possible there are blood clots in your urine. Microscopic hematuria does not change the color of your urine and normally doesn’t have symptoms.

Dr. Zaid says hematuria is about as commonly seen as urinary tract infections (UTI) in his clinics. He adds that sometimes hematuria and a UTI co-exist. He says the medical response to blood in the urine has become more serious in recent years, and he doesn’t want to just write the symptoms off as a UTI.

“Scary bladder things, like bladder cancers, were more common in men. Because historically, men had a higher risk of smoking. As we saw the gender gap decrease in smoking, you start to see these cancers increase in women,” Dr. Zaid says.  

For women, Dr. Zaid says there are ways to know if the blood in the urine is something completely separate from menstrual bleeding.

“If it’s outside of the cycle setting, if there’s any pain associated with it, or if it’s when you’re passing urine and you see clots coming out of the urethra channel, then you get worried it may not just be the menstrual cycle,” Dr. Zaid says. “When it comes to menstrual cycles, if you have irregular cycles, breakthrough bleeding, or someone is post-menopausal and they start having bleeding, that’s not normal either.”

Treatment of hematuria can vary just as much as the cause. Dr. Zaid says if someone is at a higher risk, which includes those who are older, male, and have a smoking history or chemical exposure, the treatment could be more thorough.

“We recommend looking at the kidneys with the CT scan. It is a CT scan with contrast dye. We also recommend looking at the bladder with the camera,” Dr Zaid says.

For lower risk patients, doctors can still do a kidney ultrasound and look at the bladder.

“At the end of the day, the evaluation does involve looking at all the urinary organs. Kidneys, ureters, bladder and urethra. That involves pictures of the kidneys and ureters, whether that’s an ultrasound or a CT scan with contrast dye. Then we look directly inside the bladder with a camera, called a cystoscopy,” says Dr. Zaid who adds the cystoscopy helps because CT scans don’t always give you the anatomical detail you need to get the full picture.

“The bladder has all sorts of folds in it. So if there was a small and scary tumor, it may hide out in one of those folds. That’s why we always recommend looking inside the bladder with the camera,” Dr. Zaid says.

The cystoscopy is something OSF HealthCare providers can perform in their urology clinics without too much special preparation ahead of time.

If you have any concerns about hematuria, OSF HealthCare has multiple Urology clinics. You can find the locations here.

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