European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Background and objective: The purpose of this research was to determine whether a urine dipstick may be useful for detecting urinary tract infections in kids. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of the urine nitrite and leukocyte esterase tests in comparison to the gold standard of UTI diagnosis, which is a urine culture.
Method: Urine microscopy, urine dipstick, and urine culture were used to diagnose UTI in children aged 2-12 who presented to the emergency room or were admitted to the Department of Paediatrics, Kamineni Institute of Medical Sciences, Narketpally, Telangana, India, with symptoms consistent with UTI or fever without detectable focus. One hundred patients made up the research population. It was prospective research from the year April 2021 to May 2022, that took place in hospitals. Statistical methods were used to examine the data.
Result: Among children older than 2 years, culture-positive UTI occurred more often in girls than in boys. When contrasted to urine culture, pyuria has a higher sensitivity (up to 64.7%), specificity (up to 80.6%), positive predictive value (up to 68%), and negative predictive value (up to 78.1%). Leukocyte esterase had a sensitivity of up to 90.1%, specificity of up to 78.7%, positive predictive value of up to 73%, and a negative predictive value of up to 92.6% when contrasted to urine culture. When compared to a urine culture, nitrite has a higher sensitivity (92.5%) and specificity (92.5%) and a higher positive predictive value (87.9%) and negative predictive value (90.8%). When pitted against urine culture, the combined dipstick had a sensitivity of up to 96%, specificity of up to 80%, positive predictive value of up to 75%, and negative predictive value of up to 96%. For each of the four parameters, the chi-squared test found a p value of less than 0.001.