[Posterior urethral valves: prenatal diagnosis, neonatal data and outcome]

To evaluate the impact of prenatal diagnosis on the epidemiology and outcome of children with posterior urethral valves (PUV), considering that today termination of pregnancy may be proposed in the most severe cases.Forty-three cases of patients with PUV were diagnosed between 1998 and 2007 in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. In this study, we detailed the prenatal data and postnatal outcome of those patients with a mean follow-up period of 7.6 years.Medical interruption of pregnancy was performed in 15 severe cases. One death in utero was also observed. Twenty-seven patients were managed postnatally and one child died during the neonatal period because of lung hypoplasia. For the 26 remaining patients at the end of the follow-up period, 5 had mild renal insufficiency with a creatinine clearance calculated with the Schwartz formula of less than 80 ml/min/1.73 m2. One reached end-stage renal failure at the age of 7 years. Proteinuria and hypertension were rare.Today, because of the increase in medical termination of pregnancy in the most severe cases, most of the children born alive with PUV experienced a better renal prognosis when compared with previous data. Prenatal diagnosis and therapeutic progress significantly modified the epidemiology and outcome of this disease. Nevertheless, the best predictor of renal outcome remains renal function at 1 year of age.