Kidney Infection Symptoms & Treatment

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Kayti Brosnan. I'm a registered nurse here in Austin, Texas, and the question is about kidney infections, the signs and symptoms, and the treatment of a kidney infection. And so a kidney infection is also called pyelonephritis, and this is when you have an infection of the kidneys. Some of the symptoms that you may have are pain in the back. You might have abdominal pressure and bloating, pain or burning with urination, frequent urination, or you might have a sensation of urination altogether. You might notice a foul odor when you're urinating. There might be pus or blood in the urine, and cloudy urine. So those are some of the common symptoms of a kidney infection. And then more severe infections or pyelonephritis would also have...you'd have a high temperature greater than 101, you might have shaking and chills, nausea, and vomiting. And so this is something that needs to be treated with antibiotics. The most common are Amoxicillin, Bactrim, and Sepra...or Septra -- that's a combo drug -- and also Ciprofloxacin. So you most likely can get these orally by a doctor. If it's a severe infection, you would go into the hospital and get them through the IV. It's important to remember when you have a kidney infection that you want to be drinking plenty of fluids, avoiding citrus juice or coffee, alcohol. You just really want to be pushing fluids to help the kidneys flush out the infection that...or the bacteria that is causing the infection in your kidneys. And those are some of the symptoms and some of the treatments that are most commonly used with kidney infections."