Clinical Application of A Fully-automatic Urine Sediment Analyzer

  Objective  To evaluate the clinical application of a fully-automatic urine sediment analyzer and establish the reference range of urinary formed elements.

  Methods  The precision, carryover rate, analytical measurement range, and comparability with manual microscopy method were evaluated, and the reference ranges of red blood cells (RBC), white blood cells (WBC), squamous epithelial cells (EC), and casts by the instrument were analyzed.

  Results  The low, medium, and high values of precision were 129.10%, 20.59%, and 7.80% for RBC, and 65.73%, 14.30%, and 13.00% for WBC. The medium and high values of precision for EC were 27.01% and 21.46%. The carryover rate of RBC, WBC, and EC were all 0. The measurement range was 0-83 608/μl for RBC and 0-15 624/μl for WBC. As to the measurement range of bacteria, there were obvious differences according to the different species of bacteria. When compared the instrument results with the manual microscopy, the consistency rates were 82.80% for RBC, 73.82% for WBC, and 57.56% for EC. The reference ranges of urinary formed elements were as follows: the range of urinary RBC was 0-8/μl for males and 0-12/μl for females; the range of urinary WBC was 0-12/μl for males and 0-21/μl for females; the range of urinary EC was 0-13/μl for males and 0-42/μl for females; the range of urinary cast was 0-4/μl for males and 0-4/μl for females; and the range of urinary crystal was 0-34/μl for males and 0-2/μl for females.

  Conclusions  This fully-atomatic urine sediment analyzer has better recognition performance for RBC and WBC. We can carry on the manual recognition using audit function by instruments, and manual morphological examination when necessary, to detect crystals, casts, fungi, and irregular cell components which are difficult to identify automatically.