Forceful ureteral spurt. A common roentgen manifestation of urinary tract infection in children.

The forceful spurting of a long urinary stream from the ureters into the urinary bladder was observed recently in 2 consecutive cases during excretory urography (Figs. 1 and 2). Both patients were female children on whom the examination was being performed as part of an investigation for repeated urinary tract infection. In the first child, the possibility of an anomalous distal ureteral opening was being entertained pending its verification by a retrograde study. Before the latter procedure could be arranged, however, a similar phenomenon was observed in the excretory urogram of the second child. The repeated occurrence of this roentgen manifestation within a short interval in 2 children with similar clinical history led us to seek a pathophysiological explanation as opposed to possible congenital malformation of the distal ureter. A search of the literature, as will be brought out in the discussion, failed to produce any explanation for the finding other than a summary description of its occurrence. Mat...