Clinical features of children with horseshoe kidney in Japan

Abstract

We conducted a retrospective study to clarify the clinical features of children with horseshoe kidney in Japan. Of 59 cases, 34 (57.7%) were boys, the median age at diagnosis was 1.2 years (0.0–13.3 years), and the median observation period was 1409 days (2–6134 days). Fourteen patients (23.7%) had malformation syndromes with confirmed diagnoses, and of the other 45 patients, 17 (37.8%) had congenital anomalies. Of the 17 cases, 6 (35.4%) had neurological diseases and 5 (29.4%) had congenital heart diseases, both accounting for more than half of the cases. In this study, 9 cases (15.3%) required surgical treatment, and chronic kidney disease stage 2 was observed in 3 cases (5.1%) during the observation period. In many cases, the horseshoe kidney may be a renal manifestation of various syndromic congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract that requires attention to the presence of extrarenal lesions. In the present study, there were many cases that ended the observation in a short period of time, and further investigation of the prognosis of horseshoe kidney is needed in the future.