An investigation of the effect of genital area ablution on urine culture test results in 3-12 year old girls referring to Amir Kabir Hospital

Urine culture has an important role in diagnosing and tracking down urine tract infection (UTI) in pediatrics. Sampling methods also have a great effect on patients’ treatment procedure. Hence, this study was conducted to determine the effect of genital area ablution on urine culture test results in 3-12 year old girls referring to Amir Kabir Hospital of Arak. In a case-control study, 620 3-12 year old girls, referring to Amir Kabir Hospital in 2006, for whom urine culture test had been prescribed with suspicion of UTI, were evaluated. The population under investigation did not have a history of using catheter, genital anomaly, inflammation, genital discharge, and taking antibiotics up to seven days prior to the investigation. The patients were randomly divided into two groups of 310 each: Ablution and no-ablution. After data collection, the data were analyzed by t-test. In the ablution group, 3.7% of patients were reported with UTI, 1% with contamination, and 95.3% with normal conditions. In the non-ablution group, 4.7% of patients were reported with UTI, 2% with contamination, and 93.3% with normal conditions. Contamination rate in ablution and non-ablution groups were 1% and 2%, respectively. This difference, however, was not significant (p=0.491). The relationship between genital area ablution and reduction of contamination in urine culture was not significant; therefore, genital area ablution does not have an important effect on decreasing the contamination of urine culture.