Utility of Ureteric Jets as an Adjuvant Diagnostic Modality in Children with Ureteropelvic Junction Obstruction: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A BSTRACT Background: Ureteropelvic junction obstruction (UPJO) is a common cause of pediatric hydronephrosis, yet only one-third of affected children require surgery. Differentiating obstructive from non-obstructive cases remains challenging with current imaging methods. This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated the role of ureteric jets, assessed via color Doppler ultrasonography (USG), as an adjuvant diagnostic modality to complement gray-scale USG in children with UPJO. Materials and Methods: A systematic search of PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and Web of Science databases was conducted to identify studies reporting on ureteric jet frequency (UJF) in UPJO. Standardized mean difference (SMD) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) was calculated for the pooled data, while the I ² statistic assessed heterogeneity. Methodological quality was evaluated using the Newcastle–Ottawa scale. Results: Five studies (111 patients) met inclusion criteria. Ureteric jets were absent in 67.3% of UPJO cases, with diagnostic accuracy reaching 94%. Meta-analysis revealed a significant reduction in UJF in obstructed kidneys (SMD = −2.01, 95% CI: −3.09 to −0.94, P = 0.0002), though heterogeneity was substantial ( I ² = 80%, P = 0.006). The methodological quality of the included studies was good in four studies and poor in one study. Conclusions: The current systematic review demonstrated the absence of ureteric jets and a significant reduction in the UJF in the obstructed kidneys. However, due to heterogeneity among the included studies, further studies are needed to standardize the protocols before any definite conclusions are drawn.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.010 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".