[4131114]
Patient presented to the emergency department with abdominal pain, vomiting, and fever. The attending physician ordered a urinalysis to confirm a diagnosis of a urinary tract infection. The laboratory technician performing the test accidentally caused the report to include a false positive showing the presence of spermatozoa. The device in question is meant to flag the presence of spermatozoa, though the flag is not meant to be definitive. The flag merely indicates that there is something in the test on the flow that the spermatozoa would usually appear, such as mucus or yeast cells. The flag is meant to alert the technician to the potential presence of spermatozoa in order for a more accurate verification to occur. In this particular case, the technician missed the flag indicating a potentially positive result, and the presence of spermatozoa was reported on the laboratory results for this patient. Because the patient was a young minor, our facility's child sexual abuse protocol triggered. The local police and child protective services were contacted and reported to our facility. The patient was transferred to another facility for higher level of care, given the diagnosis of suspected sexual abuse of a child. The results was later shown to be a false positive.
Patient Sequence No: 1, Text Type: D, B5