The utility of preoperative and intraoperative cultures for guiding urosepsis empirical treatment

Abstract

Objective: Endoscopic upper urinary tract instrumentation is a common urological procedure; often associated with prior ureteric stenting and postoperative urosepsis. This study aimed to explore the clinical utility of preoperative urine and intraoperative urine and ureteric stent cultures in the management of urosepsis post upper urinary tract instrumentation. Methods: Prospective study involving pre-stented patients whose upper urinary tract was instrumented at a single centre between 2017 and 2018. Five cultures were collected per patient. Patients were tracked for development of postoperative urosepsis. Results: The study included 227 patients, with a 5.7% postoperative urosepsis rate. Risk of urosepsis was significantly associated with female gender, steroid use and having a colonized preoperative urine culture, intraoperative bladder urine or stent-end culture, or kidney urine culture. Patients with a colonized intraoperative bladder urine were 11 times more likely to develop urosepsis and were colonized with the same organism isolated from urosepsis cultures for 50% of cases. Conclusions: To our knowledge this is the largest cohort study which analyses five different urinary tract cultures and the relationship with postoperative urosepsis. A positive intraoperative bladder urine culture is an independent predictor of postoperative urosepsis development and causative organism, which could guide antibiotic management for these patients. Level of Evidence 3-b