A SCREENING METHOD FOR THE EVALUATION OF URINARY TRACT INFECTIONS IN FEMALE PATIENTS WITHOUT CATHETERIZATION

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Abstract
Clean-voided specimens have long been used for cultures from male patients, but catheterization has usually been necessary to obtain adequate cultures from the female. The catheter has been implicated as a possible source of infection; therefore, the authors devised and evaluated a clean-voided technique for use in the female. Cleansing was accomplished by having the patient sit in a Sitz chair filled with green soap solution. A midstream specimen was then caught for culture. The first 46 patients studied included 6 who had in the vicinity of 10,000 or more organisms per ml. This was confirmed by subsequent catheterization and culture. The other 40 patients had 0 to 1600 organisms per ml which is in the range that has been found as contaminants by other workers employing catheterization. Twenty-one patients had both clean-voided and catheterized specimens taken at the same time. Five had more than 10,000 organisms per ml and 16 had fewer than 900 organisms per ml in both clean-voided and catheterized cultures. It is concluded that this technique provides a safe and reliable method of obtaining urine for culture from the female and that the number of contaminants compare quite favorably with those found when catheterization is employed.

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