ArticleJournal of the American Board of Family Medicine : JABFM
Do urine cultures for urinary tract infections decrease follow-up visits?
Article in Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine : JABFM. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- When Empiric Therapy Fails: Clinical and Economic Consequences in uUTIs Among US Women.Microorganisms · 2026Article
- Tarnished gold-the "standard" urine culture: reassessing the characteristics of a criterion standard for detecting urinary microbes.Frontiers in urology · 2023Review
- Microbiology testing and antibiotic treatment for urinary tract infections in general practice: a nationwide observational study.Infection · 2021Observational
- Knowledge and Practice Discordance in Treating Urinary Tract Infections.PRiMER (Leawood, Kan.) · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundNo major clinical practice guideline recommends ordering a urine culture in the management of uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTIs). In this era of increasing antibiotic resistance, our objective was to determine if ordering urine cultures for adult women with uncomplicated UTIs provides results that lead to a decrease in follow-up visits for continued UTI symptoms.
methodsThis was a retrospective cohort study from the outpatient family medicine clinic, Madigan Army Medical Center, Tacoma, WA. Seven hundred seventy-nine nondiabetic, nonpregnant, adult (aged 18-65 years) female patients (mean age ± SD, 32.9 ± 12.1 years) diagnosed with a UTI from November 2006 through March 2008. The main outcome measure was follow-up outpatient visits within 2 weeks for recurrent UTI symptoms.
resultsOf the 779 patients studied, 332 (43%) had no urine culture ordered as part of their management and 447 (57%) had a urine culture ordered. There was no significant difference in the rate of follow-up within 2 weeks for continued UTI symptoms between the cohort without urine culture (28 of 332; 8.4%) and the cohort with urine culture (39 of 447; 8.7%) (χ(2) = 0.021; P = .89). In multivariate logistic regression, ordering a urine culture was not associated with a decreased rate of follow-up visits (adjusted odds ratio, 1.11; 95% CI, 0.65-1.90).
conclusionsIn adult women with uncomplicated UTI, ordering a urine culture was not found to be associated with a decrease in follow-up clinic visits. This finding is consistent with current guidelines that recommend against ordering a urine culture for uncomplicated UTIs.
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