Talk:Urinalysis

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Ideal sources for Wikipedia's health content are defined in the guideline Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) and are typically review articles. Here are links to possibly useful sources of information about Urinalysis.

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Hair

"hair may be tested for drug residue that is months or years old" - drug test only mentions months, not years in its table? (clem 19:15, 4 May 2005 (UTC)) what's the relevance of screening for drugs in hairs in an article about urinalysis ? wikipedia at domn dot net[reply]

Viruses

Can viruses be detected in urine? -Fsotrain09 22:01, 8 July 2006 (UTC)was[reply]

"Problems" section

I refuse to degrade myself in this fashion, and I never will. The following comments should be regarded as constructive criticism and are in no way an attack on the author, who did a fine job otherwise.

Under the "problems" section, while the arguments about private drug use mentioned in the article are certainly relevant, it would nice if there was at least a link to the numerous privacy and dignity issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with drug use, specifically the inherent dehumanizing aspects of submitting to such an invasive search for nonmedical reasons, the embarrassing and degrading nature of such tests themselves, the degree of personal information inherent in one's personal chemistry, the obvious potential for abuses (there are, of course, documented instances), and finally, the inherent unreliabilty of urinalysis in the workplace context, depending on which test is used, chain of custody etc. In the event something is "found," there is also a side issue, particularly in the private employment context, are to whether employers should be empowered to function essentially as DEA agents, wherein the punishment is refusal to employ. The lowered standard of evidence would seem to argue against the wisdom of this, even if the ensuing sanction is not comparable (yes, I am aware of the difference between public and private employment, and "employment-at-will"; I'm talking about ethics, and what as a society we are willing to tolerate).

I regret not being a expert on the subject (I DO know quite a bit, but. . .). Nonetheless, if no one steps forward, I will consider offering some well-considered and hopefully fair revisions.

I would belatedly note that these comments might better be aimed at the "drug test" entry (which has some real howlers), but I think the process is better referred to as urinalysis anyway; "drug test" is a self-evident misnomer. Sorry, but I deleted the soap box rant. It is not appropriate nor germain to the topic, Urinalysis (which is a specific medical test). Even if personal political opinion was appropriate in an encylopedia, it is under the wrong subject heading. You can create a topic of toxicology testing if you want.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.77.126.50 (talk) 10:01, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

microscopic examination - urinary casts

In this section are you able to add a link to another wikipedia page that further discusses urinary casts

http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Urinary_casts

86.31.154.76 (talk) 11:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:21, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just wondering if anyone had noticed this...."hCG detection in girlfriends is harmful for men and increases heart rate." Kind of funny, but not sure if someone should remove it? It's clearly meant to be a joke :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.35.135.136 (talk) 03:09, 31 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

normal ranges

Could we have a table or link to normal ranges of things tested for in urine ? Rod57 (talk) 23:41, 18 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good call. I don't have time right now but I found some values here: http://books.google.ca/books?id=1EVty0DlJIkC&pg=PA724&lpg=PA724&dq=urinalysis+normal&source=web&ots=3XjR_vqGJ8&sig=Q0lOWCjtiqremd5M0s4WOiiSXzk&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result Horus (talk) 03:34, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've just added a picture of a Urinalysis report. It's not complete so if anyone has a better one, or a chart of normal values go ahead and replace it. Horus (talk) 04:01, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Typo...

In the table under "medical urinalysis" the thirs row "free catecholamines" has some unusual units. mg/d?? should it be mg/dL? I can't confirm this from the source, as i don't see the data (i had a look round, but it may be the site has changed since data retreival), but at the same time i can't think of another unit that may be used. Should it be changed to mg/dL? Wuku (talk) 13:05, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the request for clarification. The d is for day, that is, 24 hours. I changed it to 24 hours just to clarify. Mikael Häggström (talk) 17:08, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Merge Urine test strip into Urinalysis

I think the contents of these articles overlap too much to justify having separate articles, and each piece of information is better presented together with those of the other article for better understanding. Mikael Häggström (talk) 17:14, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought, they are probably distinct enough to motivate separate articles. The urine test strip is one of several methods of urinalysis. I'll make some changes to make the distinction more clear. Mikael Häggström (talk) 11:28, 23 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Clarity issues

Two sentences in the ions and trace metals section are confusing. Firstly, for sodium we read that, "The sodium levels are frequently ordered during the workup of acute renal failure"; secondly, for potassium, we see that, "Urine potassium may be ordered in the workup of hypokalemia." I don't understand what is meant by "may be ordered" - is this suggesting under which clinical situations these tests are generally used? If so, I think that a re-wording would be useful that makes this clear. I would make the changes myself, but I'm not sure of the desired meaning.Jimjamjak (talk) 15:59, 15 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bit of a mess

This article is a bit of a mess, as it combines tests which are actually part of a standard urinalysis with other tests that are performed on urine. Urinary electrolytes (Na, K, Ca++) are not part of a urinalysis; they're another, separate test. hCG is not part of a urinalysis, it's a separate test. I don't know of anyone who considers free catecholamines or cortisol (or frankly, any test that requires a 24 hour urine collection) part of a urinalysis, either. And bacterial cultures certainly don't belong here. - Nunh-huh 01:07, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Physicians do not consider "urinalysis" an umbrella term for all clinical urine tests. I moved the article to title "Clinical urine tests" since that's the existing article scope. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:33, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Scope of the article

I've been interested in improving this article for a while but have found it difficult to know where to begin because of its staggering scope. As detailed in this section above, the article started out under the name "Urinalysis", but because it grew to encompass several topics that are not part of routine urinalysis, it was renamed to "Clinical urine tests". The problem is that if this article actually attempted to cover every clinical test that can be performed on urine in an adequate level of detail, it would run to the length of a textbook - meaning that the current scope of this article is not feasible. I suggest that the article should be re-scoped and re-renamed to cover only routine urinalysis (i.e. physical, dipstick and microscopic examination). Topics such as urine pregnancy test, urine drug screen, urine culture, urine metanephrines etc. are already covered in existing articles - urine electrolytes can probably be split into its own article. These entries can be linked in the "see also" section. Pinging Nunh-huh and Quercus solaris who participated in the previous discussion, as well as Graham Beards and Mikael Häggström who are regular editors in this topic area, for input. Spicy (talk)

Yes. We have a similar problem with Blood test. Perhaps we should have separate articles on microbiology tests eg. microscopy, culture and sensitivity, and chemistry tests eg. ACR, Bence-Jones etc.? Graham Beards (talk) 15:37, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There should definitely be a separate article for urine cultures, at least - I've thought about writing one before but it would take a lot of work to do it properly. Maybe at some point in the future. Spicy (talk) 12:15, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TL;DR: My position would be that if the first choice of making it a summary article is found to be too unwieldy (during construction or renovation), then the second choice of making it a set index would need to be the result. Better explanation: Regarding organizational principles, several approaches have good power (to provide solutions): (1) the sibling pair of WP:Summary and WP:Split, and (2) the sibling pair of WP:Set index and WP:DAB. Through an ontological lens, the hypernymic concept "clinical urine tests" remains an important keystone; it is a conceptually unifying node, especially for Wikipedia's layperson audience component, but substantially even for its health-care-professionals audience component too. In other words, "clear for any reader (because inherently logical), but most importantly, clear even for those readers who are noninitiate in the context." Thus, it should be handled by Wikipedia in some way that is clear and simple (easily discoverable/recognizable upon skimming across articles, without close reading), even if it ends up being only a set index. Cheers, Quercus solaris (talk) 17:01, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - if this article is redefined to only include urinalysis there will need to be a set index article at Clinical urine tests (or just Urine test?) and a hatnote. I don't mind doing this. Spicy (talk) 12:15, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, sounds great. Thanks, Quercus solaris (talk) 20:04, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Urine samples, centrifuged or not

The article needs to be consistent on whether the urine sample is spun or not with regard to counting the cells. In the UK centrifuging the urine before analysis is considered outdated and is rarely performed. For similar reasons, we report cells per microlitre and not per high power field as the latter is only semi-quantitative and varies with the microscope set up. This problem persists in the literature, which doesn't help.Graham Beards (talk) 13:22, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's interesting - it must be tedious to perform a proper cell count on dozens of urines a shift. I've tried editing the article to clarify this. Unfortunately most of my books are American and only mention this practice in passing. They don't give the full ranges, etc. I have a UK microbiology textbook that mentions "the Rant-Shepherd method" as the gold standard, but doesn't go into detail - it's mostly about cultures. You might have a better idea of where to find sourcing for this. Spicy (talk) 21:10, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Rant-Shepherd method is an alternative to using counting chambers and we count the cells in 80 microliters of urine in the wells of a microtitre plate and report as a range per microlitre. It takes a couple of minutes for each sample. Having said that, most labs here now use flow cytometry and only use the microtitre plate method for a few awkward samples.Graham Beards (talk) 05:33, 12 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The method is given here The laboratory diagnosis of urinary tract infection. Graham Beards (talk) 05:50, 12 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And this is the UK's standard method UK Standards for Microbiology Investigations Investigation of urine.Graham Beards (talk) 06:42, 12 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm actually wondering whether it's useful to include reference ranges for microscopic elements at all. They vary greatly between sources, even for the same methods. Spicy (talk) 00:29, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes that's an issue. Most of the work on urine microscopy was done in the 1950s and badly needs to be revisited. Graham Beards (talk) 10:24, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]