EPIC: Effect of Povidone Iodine Periurethral Cleansing on Level of Contamination With Clean Catch: A Randomized Control Trial

Urinary tract infections (UTI) are common acute illnesses among pediatric patients, accounting for 5-7% of emergency department visits in the under two-year-old population. However, obtaining urine samples from the precontinent patient can be difficult. There is an ongoing debate regarding which noninvasive method for urine specimen collection is best for this population. The main argument against clean catch is the high rate of contamination compared to invasive collection and reliability.

There are many methods of noninvasive urine collection. These methods are preferred as they are fairly well tolerated by patients, less distressing to parents, cost effective, and require less technical expertise. In the past; these methods have been dismissed due to their high rates of contamination, time to void and also effectiveness. The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE, UK) recommends a clean-catch urine (CCU) be the first attempt at obtaining a urine specimen from children suspected of having UTI. This means placing the urine specimen collection container into the urine mid-stream once the child has begun to void to avoid contamination. Conversely, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends clean catch urine for screening and a catheter specimen urine collection or suprapubic aspiration for definitive diagnosis. Both of these invasive techniques produce quick urine samples with low rates of contamination; however they can be painful and distressing to both the patient and parent.

The Quick-Wee method for noninvasive urine collection has been evaluated in a one randomized controlled trial and has been shown to significantly increase the five minute voiding success rate for CC urine collection; 31%, n= 174. However a past study demonstrated contamination rate of 27%, n=174. No study has directly evaluated the use of antiseptic solution in the evaluation of the QW rate of contamination in pediatric patients. The purpose of this study is to see whether the use of povidone iodine swabs prior to the QW method will decrease the rate of contamination. A decrease of the rate of contamination would strengthen the validity of this simple CCU method. Also using the this method for the collection method in both the experimental and control groups will further evaluated the five min void success rate.

The investigators chose to use iodine as the prepping agent because it is currently the standard cleaning solution used for adult and pediatric patients. It is readily available, inexpensive and has been shown to be less caustic then other prepping agents.