HOW IMPORTANCE IS THE URINE TEST?

Greeting to all readers. After those horrific incidents occurred at Hua Hin and in the Southern Part of Thailand, we hope all of you are safe and doing well. It is ideal to have both good mental health and good physical health. Therefore, it is necessary to have annual health checkup, at least once a year, to assess your current health status.

In this article, we will be talking about the importance of urine test. Many of you may be in doubt on how importance it can be. But actually urine test is useful in many ways. It can check you risk for many diseases, such as kidney disease, diabetes, cystitis, vesical calculus, etc.

Urine is a waste substance from our blood filtered by the kidney and eliminated out of our body. Urine is composed of 95% water, 2.5% urea, and 2.5% of other substances. Normally, we would urinate around 3-5 times during the day, by volume is around 1-2 liters per day. A urine test in a laboratory can be divided into 3 types as follow:

Physical examination – will check on the volume, color, smell, turbidity, and the specific gravity of urine

Normal urine would have amber color, change of urine may indicate dysfunctional of the kidney or the metabolism.
New urine would usually be in clear color, but may be more turbid if left for a while. Turbidity of urine caused by abnormality may come from having too much white blood cells, bacteria, or fat in the urine.
The specific gravity will indicate the ability to control the concentration of body fluids of the kidneys. The average stage is 1.005 to 1.030.

Chemical examination – will help identify abnormal condition of our body at primary stage as follow:

To check the acidity (pH) that indicate the capacity of renal function, where the average stage is 5-8.
To check for any chemicals in the urine. In general, it should not be detected or tested negative. However, if our body is in bad conditions or has any dysfunctional, such as patients with chronic kidney disease, older people where protein is usually found in their urine, or patients with diabetes where having poor glucose control would led to excess sugar in their urine.

Microscopic examination – is the most important part of urine test as it would give a more accurate diagnosis. Since there are cases where you could not find any abnormality with the physical and chemical examinations, but discover such abnormality with the microscopic examination. The following are what can be found in urine sediment.

Urothelium cells would indicate the inflammatory or dysfunctional of the urinary tract
White blood cells, lots of bacteria, or fungus may indicate infection in the genitourinary tracts, cystitis, or pyelitis, etc.
Red blood cells may be a result from or indicate concussion incident, tumor, vesical calculus, kidney calculi, or inflammatory.
Any sort of crystals and protein may indicate thromboembolism caused by vesical calculus or kidney calculi.

Nevertheless, the accuracy of the test also depends on the collection of serous fluids. The correct way to collect the urine for the laboratory is to collect in the middle period of urinate, where you already urinate a little to clean the urethra. You should collect around 10-15 milliliters of the urine in a clean container and let out the rest. Women should avoid getting a urine test during a menstruation or inform the staffs before getting the test to avoid any misinterpretation on the test result. And as you can see now, just an easy urine test would allow you to know a lot more about your body. So are you ready for your annual health checkup?