1. What is bacteriuria? When is it significant?
2. How do microorganisms enter the urinary tract?
3. Why is aseptic urine collection important when cultures are ordered?
4. List five bacteria that can cause urinary tract infection.
5. If you counted 20 colonies from a 0.01-ml inoculum of a 1:10 dilution of urine, how many organisms per milliliter of specimen would you report? Is this number significant?
6. Is the urine colony count an appropriate indicator of the need for an antimicrobial susceptibility test of an organism isolated from a urine culture? Why?
7. If you took a urine specimen for culture to the laboratory but found it temporarily closed, what would you do?
8. How would you instruct a female patient to collect her own urine specimen by the "clean-catch" technique? A male patient?
9. What can you learn from visual inspection of a urine specimen?
10. Describe a urine transport system that allows the specimen to remain at room temperature for short time periods without refrigeration.
11. What is leukocyte esterase? What is its significance when detected in urine?
12. Define serum titer.
13. What are acute and convalescent sera? Why must both be tested to make a serological diagnosis of infectious disease?
14. What is the difference between an agglutination test and a precipitation test?
15. In a paired serum sample, what test results indicate recent infection?
16. What is a humoral antibody?
17. Name the two types of antibodies that are produced following a microbial infection. What is the significance of each in serological diagnosis? Describe a doubling serial dilution of six tubes, beginning with a serum dilution of 1:2 in the first tube.