Congenital Urological Abnormalities

I went through this with both my daughters. They had surgery at Children's Memorial and it was truly a piece of cake for them. They were 2 and 4 when they had surgeries and they were fine afterwards. They wanted to be up and playing and I was too nervous to let them walk around and stuff. With both daughter the incision was small, about an inch below their belly button. They operated on both the kideny and bladder to correct the abnormalities and recovered just fine. My youngest was in the ER every month for a year before we did the surgery, we tried to use medicine to control it and it did not work. She had so much kidney damage from the kidney infections from teh reflux, the surgery was a Godsend truly, b/c she has not been sick since, almost 3 years later!
It is harder on us than on them, keep that in mind!

I think that a lot will depend on the severity of your daughter's issues. I was diagnosed with double ureters on one side when I was in high school. I had a bladder infection at the time. Since then, and it's been many, many years, I haven't had any problems. Nothing has been done about it.

Sue

Hi A.,

My 5 year old daughter went through the same thing when she was a baby (2 mos). They actually caught the duplicated kidney (proper name for two kidneys in one) when I was about 3 wks shy of my due date during an ultrasound. Her duplicated side was very backed up and swollen. At 2 months, and an unbelievable amount of test, scans etc....she went in for surgery at Children's in Chicago. Her Dr. was Maizel...he is ment to be the best.

We were a wreck, they took her in to place the problematic ureter either into the other ureter, or to place it in the kidney the way it should be. When they took her back to prep her, they did an x-ray (that is about the only thing she hadn't had before) to see wether the incision would be in her front side or back. Amazingly, they found the ureter was in place, but had a cyst on the end of it (the hole was too small for drainage so everything was backing up). They ended up going in thru her bladder (vaginally) and just cutting open a little bigger hole at the end of it. No incisions...and she has been fine since! She is due for a follow up this year. So, see if the Dr. has taken an x-ray!!!

Apparently, many people have it, but if they have no problems, they never find out they have it until their autopsy! Good luck, I really know how you feel and I hope this helped at little bit!

A. - My 2 1/2 year old son was born with two ureters on the right side. He actually has two kidneys on the right side. They are much smaller than a normal kidney. One of the ureters was blocked and he had a lower pole pyleloplasty to correct that issue at six months. That surgery went smoothly and he was in the hospital for two days following. In addition to the blockage of the ureter, he had high grade renal reflux on the right side. He had surgery to correct the reflux at 1 1/2. That was done at Children's Memorial and he was just in the hospital overnight. We were aware he had a kidney issue prior to birth. This showed up on ultrasound. From the day he was born, he was on daily antibiotic to prevent infection. It was scary to go through, but he is great today and we were able to stop the antibiotic immediately after his second surgery. He will go for an ultrasound in September to check everything. I'm reasonably optimistic that this will go well. One thing the doctors told me, that helped on the more difficult days, is that many people live long, happy and NORMAL lives with just one kidney. I hope this helps some. If you want to get a second opinion, we see Dr. John T.B. Houston. He was excellent and I would highly recommend him.