Diagnostic Accuracy of Urine Flow Cytometry in Excluding Bacteruria

A prerequisite for the appropriate use of antibiotics is timely access to accurate diagnostic tests, since treatment of acute infections should be initiated within a few hours to avoid serious complications such as bacteremia, sepsis, organ failure, septic shock and death.

The diagnosis of urinary tract infections including acute pyelonephritis (APN) is difficult due to often weak and non-specific symptoms and high incidence of asymptomatic bacteruria in especially elderly patients. The diagnosis is verified by significant bacteriuria in urine culture.

Unfortunately, the time from urine sample to result from urine cultures is more than 24 hours days. Urine test strips are unreliable with low specificity and low predictive values. Therefore, a point-of-care (POC) test is desired, which can provide rapid results and quickly identify a bacteriuria. One such tool may be urine flow cytometry (UFC), which has shown promising diagnostic value for the exclusion of bacteriuria with a high negative predictive value. However, better documentation for its use as an ED diagnostic screening method is needed.

The aim of the study is to investigate the diagnostic accuracy of POC-UFC on diagnosing and excluding bacteriuria? Our hypothesis is that by excluding patients not having bacteriuria, it will contribute to a more rapid and accurate diagnosis

Inclusion criteria

• Suspicion of acute infections assessed by the receiving physician at the emergency department

Exclusion criteria

• If the attending physician considers that participation will delay a life-saving treatment or patient needs direct transfer to the intensive care unit.
• Admission within the last 14 days
• Verified COVID-19 disease within 14 days before admission
• Pregnant women
• Severe immunodeficiencies: Primary immunodeficiencies and secondary immunodeficiencies (HIV positive CD4 <200, Patients receiving immunosuppressive treatment (ATC L04A), Corticosteroid treatment (>20 mg/day prednisone or equivalent for >14 days within the last 30 days), Chemotherapy within 30 days)