How to Treat Asymptomatic and Symptomatic Urinary Tract Infections in the Kidney Transplant Recipients?

Patients with end-stage renal functions are treated with renal transplantation. After the transplantation, kidney transplant recipients (KTR) are at the risk of urinary tract infection (UTI). UTI in KTR may be symptomatic and asymptomatic. Asymptomatic UTI is the presence of the organisms without any signs and symptoms. There are various ways suggested in the published research papers to deal with UTI in the KTR. The goal of this literature review is to explore how to treat symptomatic and asymptomatic UTI in KTR. A PubMed search was conducted to identify the studies explaining the methods used to deal with UTI in KTR. A total number of 2158 articles were found while searching for regular keywords; however, we found 996 articles with the medical subject heading (Mesh) keywords. After applying the inclusion/ exclusion criteria, 56 articles with the regular keywords search and 29 articles with the Mesh keywords search were selected. These articles included 24 randomized clinical trials, 16 clinical trials, 7 review articles, 5 case reports, 2 controlled clinical trials, 2 observational studies, and 1 cross-sectional study. Our analysis has shown that the early removal of the stent after the transplantation and the use of antibiotics are beneficial in reducing the incidence of symptomatic UTI in the KTR; whereas, treating asymptomatic UTI in KTR has not been proven helpful in reducing the incidence of developing symptomatic UTI later on.