Question

5 month old female infant presenting with diarrhea fever and vomitting with little voiding and ability to keep food or fluid down. Her urine lab came back and under the category bacteria, all the lab said was "few" I am getting mixed answers from online. Apparently although urine is supposed to be sterile, some bacteria can be present in a healthy individual. So is the category "few" enough to point towards a bacterial infection. I have to make a case for why this part of the lab is clinically significant, if it is, so I can't just tie it into the other problems such as the symptoms and say because of this she has a bacterial UTI. so my question is, is the result "few" bacteria in the urine actual enough to make a case for bacterial UTI? Thank you!

Answer 1

Urine is normally sterile. However, when collecting the urine there may be a chance of contaminating with skin bacteria is frequent in such cases the count of bacteria up to 10,000 colonies of bacteria/ml are considered normal. Greater than 100,000 colonies/ml indicates bacterial UTI

And check the puss cell count in urine. Is it is 1-2cell/hpf without symptoms patient is not having UTI if count more than 2 with minor symptoms or between 6-10 patient having UTI

So in this case there is a few collection of bacterial colony which means absolutely there is presence of bacteria than a normal conditions so according to the age and gender the patient is a female infant so there is higher risk of acute UTI we need to start antibiotic treatment for UTI

So this case can be taken as bacterial UTI when considering the the age, gender and need of treatment for UTI