[Evaluation of a UF-1000i screening method to identify the bacteriuria for cultures and susceptibility testing].

Urine culture remains the gold standard for diagnosing urinary tract infections, but most clinical samples yield negative results. Fast screening methods will improve the turnaround time and also reduce the associated costs. We evaluated the detection of bacteria using the Sysmex UF-1000i urine analyzer to identify negative samples which do not need further culture testings. The bacterial counts of the UF-1000i method and of the conventional culture of 197 samples, including 117 samples of midstream urine (MU) and 80 from catheter ports (CU), were prospectively compared, and the patient backgrounds were reviewed. The cut-off values to determine the necessity for culture were 2.7 bacteria/microL for MU and 11.0 bacteria/microL for CU samples, and 16.2% of the MU and 30.0% of the CU samples did not require cultures. These cut-off values are similar to those described in previous studies, however, our findings suggest that it would therefore be possible to reduce the need for unnecessary samples by the use of our cut-off values, which utilize the CU and MU samples separately. The cost reduction was calculated to be $239-306 per 100 samples. This UF-1000i screening method is an acceptable modality which improves the turnaround time, workload and cost to perform urine cultures.