Automated Flow Cytometry: An Alternative to Urine Culture in a Routine Clinical Microbiology Laboratory?

The urine culture is the "gold standard" for the diagnosis of urinary tract infections (UTI) but constitutes a significant workload in the routine clinical laboratory. Due to the high percentage of negative results, there is a need for an efficient screening method, with a high negative predictive value (NPV) that could reduce the number of unnecessary culture tests. With the purpose of improving the efficiency of laboratory work, several methods for screening out the culture-negative samples have been developed, but none of them has shown adequate sensitivity (SE) and high NPV. Many authors show data about the efficacy of flow cytometry in the routine clinical laboratory. The aim of this article is to review and discuss the current literature on the feasibility of urine flow cytometry (UFC) and its utility as an alternative analytical technique in urinalysis.