Screening for urinary tract infection with the Mastascan Elite

Mastascan Elite urine screen (MUS) is compared to a conventional method to determine significant growth of urinary pathogens and determine identification and susceptibility. MUS can detect at least 10(3) colony-forming units (cfu)/mL of commonly isolated pathogens and in this study identified 161 true positive bacterial growths (15.2%), 840 true negatives (79.2%), 54 false positives (5.1%) and six false negatives (0.6%). Overall performance in determining susceptibility to nine antibiotics directly from urine was 10.5% true resistance, 82.4% true susceptibility, 5.3% false resistance and 1.8% false susceptibility. Using limited tests, the system correctly identified 80.7% of isolates, 11.8% could not be identified at all and 7.5% were incorrectly identified. In this study, MUS provided 94.7% of results in 24 h, compared to 78.4% produced by the conventional method. Thus, MUS proved an effective and efficient method for processing urines, saving significant time, materials and human resources.