Abstract:

Background and Objective: Urinary tract infections are the common infections in general practice, understanding how practitioners use diagnostic tests and the effect on treatment decision under daily practice conditions is important to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescription and so reduce a great problem of antimicrobial resistance to most of antibiotics. (1) This study aimed at observing the use of urine rapid dipstick as compared to culture as a reference test in the diagnosis of UTIs in Mwanza region.

Methodology: This analytical cross sectional hospital based study involved 1412 patients suspected to have urinary tract infections attending treatment at Bugando medical centre, Sekou Toure regional hospital, Nyamagana district hospital and Makongoro clinic from March 2019 to June 2019. About 15-20mls of urine collected from each patient in which half of it was used for dipstick urinalysis and remaining half was used for culture (a reference test) to look for significant microorganisms which cause UTIs (2). Data was analyzed by using STATA version 13 as per study objectives.

Results: In this study results for sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive values and negative predictive values were as follows; Leukocyte esterase had sensitivity and specificity of 59% and 68%. Positive and negative predictive values of 48% and 77% Nitrite had sensitivity and specificity of 10% and 99% positive and negative predictive values of 92% and 68% when combined, leukocyte esterase and nitrite had sensitivity and specificity of 9% and 100%. Compared to culture all together had positive and negative predictive values of 95% and 68%.

Conclusion: Finding from study support that only urine dipstick analysis is not enough to diagnose UTI. Clinicians should make decisions according to clinical examination of the patients and order urine culture if the urine analysis results don’t match with the patient’s clinic.