[Routine diagnosis of bacteriuria: estimation of urinary sediment or counting blood cells? (author's transl)]

Testing of a method of bacteriuria diagnosis which would be feasible for outpatient routine work and highly reliable while requiring little cost and effort, revealed the clear superiority of examining the uncentrifuged urine in the counting chamber over the sedimentation method. Whereas the accuracy of the sedimentation method in bacteriuria diagnosis is about 50%, the counting chamber method gave correct results in more than 90% of the cases. This entails saving in terms of manhours. The only drawback of the counting chamber method is its higher rate of false-positive findings caused by the fact that the microscopic identification of bacteria enters into the final count. This drawback, however, is more than made up by the reduced amount of material and time involved in this procedure.