Deciding when to prescribe IV antibiotics for UTIs in kids could soon be made easier thanks to Australian doctors who have developed a world-first individualised scoring tool.

Dubbed ‘RUPERT’, the score can identify children with complicated UTIs who would benefit from initial IV antibiotics without relying on blood tests or urine cultures, says researchers from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI).

It relies on six clinical features — rigours, urological abnormalities, pyrexia, emesis, recurrent UTIs and tachycardia — with a cut-off score of three correctly identifying the antibiotic route with 80% accuracy.

The decision support tool fills a gap in clinical guidelines for managing paediatric UTIs, says Associate Professor Penelope Bryant, a paediatric infectious diseases physician at MCRI and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.