The screening of urines with leucocyte esterase/nitrite test strip - abstract

ABSTRACT

The culture of mid-stream specimen of urines for significant bacteriuria forms the bulk of the workload of the microbiological laboratory. Any screening test which can effectively reduce this load will be most useful. This study evaluated the LN strip in 942 urine samples, using 10 (to the 4th power) Colony Forming Units/ml of one or two species as the criterion for signiifcant bacteriuria. The prevalence rate of infection was 32.1 percent. The sensitivity of the LN test was 82.5 percent, the specificity was 38.5 percent and the negative predictive value was 81.9 percent. These results have demonstrated that the LN test in this study was not cost-effective. Further study in more selected populations with a lower prevalence rate of infection may yet prove the LN strip to be cost-effective (AU)