Utility of urine reagent strip in screening women with incontinence for urinary tract infection

The aim of this study was to determine the utility of urine reagent strips in screening women with urinary incontinence for urinary tract infections. Subjects were all women presenting with urinary incontinence. A urine specimen was screened for urinary tract infection with a urine reagent strip and urine culture. Using the urine culture result as the gold standard, the sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of the urine reagent strips were calculated. A total of 265 pairs of reagent strips and urine cultures were evaluated. Thirty-one cultures grew out of a single organism; nine of these had a positive urine reagent strip, yielding a sensitivity of 29%. The specificity of the urine reagent strip was 99%, the positive predictive value was 82% and the negative predictive value was 92%. For women presenting with urinary incontinence, the sensitivity of a urine reagent test for diagnosing urinary tract infection was low.