Article Sidebar
Article Details
Copyright remains in the Author’s name. The work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial Works License. Authors are required to complete and sign an Author Agreement form that outlines Author and Publisher rights and terms of publication. The Agreement form should be uploaded along with other submissions files and any submission will be considered incomplete without it [forthcoming].
Material submitted for publication in the SAMJ is accepted provided it has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. Please inform the editorial team if the main findings of your paper have been presented at a conference and published in abstract form, to avoid copyright infringement. The SAMJ does not hold itself responsible for statements made by the authors.
Previously published images
If an image/figure has been previously published, permission to reproduce or alter it must be obtained by the authors from the original publisher and the figure legend must give full credit to the original source. This credit should be accompanied by a letter indicating that permission to reproduce the image has been granted to the author/s. This letter should be uploaded as a supplementary file during submission.
Main Article Content
Abdominal complications in black and Indian children with nephrotic syndrome
Abstract
Abdominal complications were detected and investigated in 19 (10%) of 191 children with nephrotic syndrome who experienced 35 episodes of these complications. Fourteen children were Indian with steroid-responsive nephrotic syndrome, and 5 were black, of whom 4 had membranous nephropathy and 1 focal proliferative nephritis. All had clinical features of peritonitis and hypovolaetnia was frequently present. Eleven of the 35 episodes were culture-proven peritonitis (5 due to Pneumococcus, 6 due to Gram-negative bacteria) and in 24 the cultures were negative. Hypovolaemia occurred in 6 of the former group and 5 of the latter. The occurrence of these episodes bore no temporal relationship to steroid and cydophosphatnide treatment. Sixty-nine per cent of the complications appeared within the first 3 years ofonset of the nephrotic syndrome and 8 of 19 patients experienced Olultiple episodes. In this study, hypovolaetnia always occurred in the context of clinically detected peritonitis and not as a separate complication, suggesting infection together with fluid and protein losses as likely pathogenetic mechanisms.
