Urinary tract infections in pediatric practice. A comparative study of three diagnostic tools: dip-slides, bacterioscopy and leucocyturia.

1,261 fresh urine specimens of patients of a pediatric office were examined by optical microscope and cultured on dip-slides (Urotube). 132 pathological bacteriurias, representing 95 certain episodes of UTI, served as reference material. The bacteriuria, leucocyturia and bacterioscopy were analysed by means of four validity tests: sensitivity test, predictive value of negative test, specificity test, and predictive value of positive test. The comparison shows that bacterioscopy is as valuable as dip-slides, provided that (a) only the clearly or highly positive bacterioscopies, or (b) the associated bacterioscopy and leucocyturia--but only double negative or double positive--be considered.