Urine Latex Agglutination Tests

We recently presented data suggesting that urine latex agglutination (ULA) tests had little effect on the management of febrile children at risk for invasive bacterial infection, in that treatment and disposition decisions were driven by clinical factors rather than test results.1 While our paper was in press, data from another center were published yielding similar conclusions.2 We report herein that the diagnostic behavior of clinicians at our children9s hospital appears to have been affected by logical arguments against ULA testing and data supporting those arguments (these data were presented to the medical staff and residents several years before publication of the paper).