Question

What are the uses of urine analysis?

Answer 1

Urine analysis simply means tests done involving your urine. It involves analyzing the appearance, concentration, and content of the urine. It has a wide-scale significance in clinical pathology.

Complete answer:
A urine analysis is done for some of the basic reasons as listed below:
1. For examination of overall health: Doctors may ask the patient for a routine checkup which may involve urine analysis, in case of pregnancy checkup, pre-surgery preparations, or during hospital admissions for detection of diseases like diabetes, jaundice, etc.
2. To diagnose a medical condition: The prescriber may suggest a urinalysis test if you are experiencing abdominal pain, back pain, frequent or painful urination, or other urinary problems. This test may help to detect the cause of these symptoms.
3. To follow-up or diagnose a medical condition: If you are going through a medical condition like diabetes or UTI (Urinary tract infections), the doctor can suggest a urine analysis test to follow up the recovery pace or current situation of the condition.

Note:
Certain tests also require a urine sample like the commonly available household pregnancy test kits (known as Gravindex test), and certain drug screening tests. But these don’t fall under the urinalysis tests, since they look for substances that are not included in a typical urinalysis. For example, a pregnancy test would look for the hormone HCG in the sample, and the drug screening test would look for various metabolites in the urine subject to purpose.