Clinical usefulness of iQ200/iChem Velocity workstation for screening of urine culture

BACKGROUND: Clinical microbiology laboratories are asked to process large numbers of urine specimens for culture, but only 20–40% of them are positive. Therefore, a rapid, reliable screening method is necessary to speed up the reporting of a negative result. In this study, we evaluated the iQ200/iChem workstation, which is a combination of digital imaging software and a strip reader to predict negative urine culture. METHOD: A total of 1942 urine specimens were processed through both culture and iQ200/ iChem workstation. We analyzed the performance using two definition of positive urine culture; one or two potential uropathogens at a concentration of ≥10(5) CFU/ml and ≥ 10(4) CFU/ml. We assessed combinations of parameters (ASP; all small particles, WBC; leukocyte, BACT; bcteria, LE; leukocyte esterase) applying various cut-offs which can achieve the negative predictive value (NPV) ≥97% and culture reduction rate ≥ 50%. RESULTS: The culture positive rate was 12.8 and 18.4% applying the criteria of ≥10(5) CFU/ml and ≥ 10(4) CFU/ml, respectively. The area under the curve (AUC) of each parameter for ≥10(5) CFU/ml / ≥10(4) CFU/ml bacteriuria was 795 /0.719 for WBC, 0.722 / 0.701 for ASP and 0.740 /0.704 for bacteria. Therefore, we investigated the combination of the parameters. With the fixed parameter of BACT≥1/HPF and positive LE, the combinations of WBC ≥ 4/HPF and ASP ≥8500/μl or WBC ≥ 6/HPF and ASP≥5500/μl showed good performance for detecting ≥10(5) CFU/ml uropathogen. The ranges of sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value and culture reduction rate were 91.5–92.3%, 49.8–52.6%, 97.7–97.9% and 50.4–53.0%, respectively. However, none of the combined setting yielded acceptable range of NPV for detecting ≥10(4) CFU/ml uropathogen (NPV 92.9–94.9%). Enterococcus spp. was the most common uropathogen causing the false negative results (55.7%), and also the main pathogen among the positive culture of 10(4-5) CFU/ml bacteriuria (45%). CONCLUSIONS: iQ200/iChem workstation was excellent in detection of ≥10(5) CFU/ml uropathogen, but unsatisfactory in detection of 10(4–5) CFU/ml uropathogen and Enterococcus spp. It can be useful for screening of urine specimens to reduce bacterial culture. However, notice from clinician will be necessary for specimens from the patients with high risk for UTI, such as pregnant woman, infant, elderly or immune compromised patients. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12879-019-4141-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.