Screening for asymptomatic bacteriuria in pregnant patients: three office screening systems versus quantitative...

We screened 691 asymptomatic prenatal patients by quantitative culture of clean voided urine specimens and one of three office screening devices to detect bacteriuria. The ability of each screening system to detect a single pathogenic organism in concentration equal to or greater than 100,000/ml was analyzed. Microstix-3 reagent strips had 87.5% accuracy, with the smallest number of false-positive results (6.7%). The Bacturcult system was correct in 75% of cases, but yielded 30% false-positive results. The Testuria system was least accurate (62.5%) and had the highest incidence of false-positive tests (71%).