Automated Bladder Ultrasound Is Inaccurate for Measuring Bladder Volume in Young Children

Automated bladder ultrasound (ABUS) devices are inexpensive and easy to use for calculating bladder volumes. Researchers in Australia prospectively compared performance of the BladderScan BVI ABUS and conventional real-time ultrasound (RTUS) for measuring bladder volumes in 61 healthy young children (age, ≤24 months). Patients were scanned with both devices at two time points 1 hour apart. For the ABUS measurements, two senior pediatric emergency physicians each performed three readings per child. RTUS bladder volume calculations (length × height × width × 0.52375) were performed by a pediatric sonographer blinded to the ABUS results.

Repeatability of the ABUS measurements was poor. Agreement between the two methods was poor — 95% of ABUS re…