A pilot clinical trial on a new point-of-care test for the diagnosis and fast management of urinary tract infections in the Emergency Department.

Background: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common bacterial infections occurring in both community and health care setting. Laboratory diagnosis of UTIs is attained by conventional urine culture which identifis and quantifis infecting bacteria, followed by antibiotic susceptibility testing. Ths approach is time consuming and requires a considerable workload. A user-friendly, automated test for rapid bacterial quantifiation has been developed by MBS (a spin-of of Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy) as a point-of-care test (POCT) for UTIs. Th aim of this study was to perform a preliminary clinical trial of the new MBS POCT for diagnosis and management of UTIs. Methods: A prospective diagnostic accuracy evaluation study was performed in collaboration with the Emergency Department of the Azienda Ospedaliera Sant’Andrea of Rome (Italy), on 122 patients with clinically suspected UTIs. Results of the MBS POCT were compared with those of the routine tests for urine culture and antibiotic susceptibility. Results: Th MBS POCT, used in the Emergency Department, provided a UTI diagnosis in < 5 hours with very high accuracy, sensitivity and specifiity. However, antibiotic susceptibility evaluation provided some false resistant results, when exceedingly high concentrations of bacteria were present in urines. Conclusion: Th MBS POCT represents a valuable diagnostic tool for the detection of UTI, substantially saving time and assuring comparable quality of results, ultimately facilitating the successful management of infections. As for conventional antibiotic susceptibility tests, the bacterial inoculum is critical for signifiance of results.