Reading lab results

 

EXPAT MEDICAL CLINIC    Tel.: +36 30 9141477   HOME

1037 Budapest, Mátyáshegyi út 43.   E-MAIL    How to get there?

 

  

Japanese

Swedish

Italian

German

English

French

Russian

Magyar

 

 

Reading lab results. ("based on a true story")
One of the key issues of good medicine is to be able to see the patient, his symptoms, the findings of the physical examination, of radiology and laboratory as a whole. This makes the doctor.

It is a difficult job.
What chance is there for the doctor to achieve such quality if she/he gets confused already at reading the laboratory results.
For instance this one:



In the bottom there is the name of a kind of bacteria (Escherichia coli) with a high number (10*5, actually this should read 10to5). This would mean that the urine is very infected. But: the urine sediment does not contain real pus! In a urinary tract infection (UTI) pus is present in the urine. That means a lot of white blood cells in the sediment, not just 2-3. (fvs means white blood cell)
So the bacteria do not come from the urinary tract. They come from the skin of the genital region. You can not expect the mother to obtain sterile urine from a young girl.
And first of all you can not declare a UTI and give antibiotics. Even less can you do this repeatedly.