Introduction
Urinalysis is one of the most commonly performed screening tests in the Clinical Laboratory. It has an important role in evaluating various components and characteristics of urine, thus helping in diagnosing and monitoring nephrological, urological and other systemic conditions.1,2The common instances where urinalysis is performed include suspected urinary tract infection, urinary stones, infectious and non-infectious renal disease, systemic diseases such, pregnancy, diabetes mellitus, acidosis or alkalosis.3Traditional non-standardized urine sediment analysis was used in many labs initially. However, because of the wide variation in the results and decreased sensitivity in detecting urinary sediments the non-standardized sediment procedure is not recommended to be used now.
Although manual urine analysis procedures are standardized, it is a tedious job if the sample load is larger. Many steps in the manual procedure may cause loss of cells or lysis of cells. Therefore many semi-automated as well as completely automated urine analyzers with inbuilt microscopy like URiSCAN Super+ YD Diagnostics andSysmex UC-3500 -UF 5000 Urine Analyzer respectively have gradually increased in laboratories. These analyzers have an inbuilt software with image-based analysis systems. These images can be stored and viewed later on the workstation screen by the reporting technologist and pathologist. This can reduce and in fact, eliminate the need for manual microscopic examination in most of the samples.
Clinical laboratories that have upgraded themselves from manual microscopic to automated methods have few concerns regarding the accuracy and concordance of results with the manual procedure.3 Although it helps in saving labour as well as time, before reporting the final results of the analysis, the formed elements must be examined visually by a pathologist or a trained technician who can decide to either approve or reclassify the result.4
To the best of our knowledge, there has not been any study from India on the comparison of the two automated urine analyzers URiSCAN Super+ YD Diagnostics and Sysmex UC-3500 -UF 5000 Urine Chemistry Analyzer with the microscopy method. The study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of urine chemistry and sediment analyzers and assess the concordance between manual microscopy and the two automated urine sediment analyzers URiSCAN Super+ YD Diagnostics andSysmex UC-3500 -UF 5000 Urine Chemistry Analyzer.