Objective National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, UK suggests routine urine culture for infants with prolonged jaundice. It is time consuming, involves cost and anecdotally urine cultures were rarely positive in our experience. We wanted to investigate the usefulness and the need for this practice in the above setting.

Methodology Retrospective case note and microbiology database review of urine culture results for well infants attending prolonged jaundice clinic between 11/09/02 to 04/04/07 (4 yrs and 7 months). Possible UTI was described as presence of white cells and/or growth >10×106/L (mixed or single organism).

Results All 256 infants who attended the clinic had their urine cultures taken. 5.46% (14/256) infants met the criteria for possible UTI. On recall and reculture only 0.7% (2/256) infants were treated as UTI. See table.

Conclusions Urine culture was rarely positive in infants attending prolonged Jaundice clinic. With jaundice being a rare sign of UTI urine dipstick might prove to be a beneficial practice as a rapid diagnostic aid in well infants. This should however be considered based on regional consensus and further larger studies involving a combination of urine dipstick and cultures in well infants with prolonged jaundice.