Consistency of refrigerated pathological urine sediment

Urinalysis is a routine medical laboratory investigation, as examination of the urine plays a vital role in the diagnosis of kidney diseases. Sometimes the identification of urine sediment needs confirmation by expertise in clinical microscopy, and this is difficult in the far rural area in the developing countries. Here, the author evaluated a feasibility to use refrigerated urine sediment for repeated analysis. In this work, the author found that it is feasible to use refrigerated urine sediment for repeated analysis. The good correlation (> 0.9) can be seen for the epithelium, red blood cell, and cast but not for the white blood cell. The consistency of the repeat analysis results are an orderly decrease from epithelium (4 days), red blood cell (3 days), white blood cell (3 days), and cast (2 days). However, as time passes, reliability decreases.