Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Risk Factors
Harmful bacteria infiltrate the mucosal wall of the bladder causing an inflammatory response known as cystitis. Typically, the organisms causing the urinary tract infection are enteric coliforms which inhabit the periurethral vaginal introitus. These coliforms travel up the urethra and into the bladder; therefore, causing a UTI (Leslie et al., 2022).
Casi L. Pennington
University of West Florida
NUR4125: Pathophysiology
Professor Jake Bush
The presence of nitrites or leukocyte esterase will automatically trigger a microscopic evaluation of the urine for bacteria, WBCs, and RBCs. On microscopy, there should be no bacteria in uninfected urine, so any bacteria on a gram-stained urine under microscopy is highly correlated to UTI. A good urine sample with greater than 5 to 10 WBC/HPF is abnormal and highly suggestive of UTI in symptomatic patients (Leslie et al., 2022).
Classic teaching on urine culture sets the gold standard for infected urine at greater than 10 colony forming units (CFU). Recent literature states that a patient who presents with symptoms and greater than 10 CFU is diagnostic of infection (Kang et al., 2018).
Kang, C. I., Kim, J., Park, D. W., Kim, B. N., Ha, U.-S., Lee, S. J., Yeo, J. K., Min, S. K., Lee, H., Wie, S. H. (2018, March 21). Clinical practice guidelines for the antibiotic treatment of community-acquired urinary tract infections. Infection & Chemotherapy, 50(1). https://doi.org/10.3947/ic.2018.50.1.67
Leslie, S., Raygaert, W., Doerr, C. (2022, November 28). Urinary tract infection (nursing) - statpearls - NCBI bookshelf. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved April 24, 2023, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK568701/
Norris, T.L. & Tuan, R.L. (2020). Disorders of renal function. In Porth’s Essentials of Pathophysiology (5th ed.) (pp. 860-889). Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer.