A comparative cytologic study of 100 urine specimens processed by the slide centrifuge and membrane filter techniques.

An evaluation of cytology preparations made by the slide centrifuge and membrane filter techniques was made on 100 consecutive urine specimens from 46 patients. The membrane filter technique gave better cellular recovery and produced slides qualitatively superior to those prepared by the slide centrifuge technique. The former, therefore, is the recommended method. The slide centrifuge might be of greater value with urine of low cellularity where the membrane filter has provided only a few to practically no cells. The diagnostic accuracy on clinical follow-up of the patients included in this study is 94% for both methods, with no false positive cases and a 6% false negative rate. This high degree of accuracy indicates that these concentrating methods may lead to clinically valuable information if used routinely in the cytology laboratory.