Keep your urine for 24 hours and remember these 6 things!

Retaining urine may seem simple, but if you are not careful, it will affect the patient's test results. In severe cases, it will not only affect the detection of changes in the disease, but also mislead treatment. Generally, during the process of urine retention, there will be more or less urine retention, as well as interference from diet and exercise. These are not testable. Therefore, patients must follow the doctor's advice and pay attention to their diet before urine retention. Do not drink too much water in order to retain urine, avoid strenuous exercise, choose appropriate containers, etc. Only in this way can it better help to retain urine.

Next, we will explain the common problems and precautions when collecting 24-hour urine specimens in the nephrology department.

First: Retain urine

The most common problem with collecting 24-hour urine specimens is collecting too much urine.

The main reason is that the doctors who wrote the test orders did not explain the standard method of urine retention to the patients or their families, for example, they simply said "urine from 6 am today to 6 am tomorrow."

Therefore, many patients keep urine samples at two 6 o'clock times. If a patient urinated once at 10 o'clock last night when he went to bed, and did not urinate again until 6 o'clock this morning, then if all the urine is kept, he will actually keep a 32-hour urine sample.

The correct way is to urinate at 6 o'clock in the morning of the previous day. At this time, the bladder is empty. From this time on, the kidneys continue to produce urine and store it in the bladder. If you feel the urge to urinate at 9 o'clock in the morning and go to urinate, this is the urine produced in the three hours from 6 to 9 o'clock.

Repeat this process until 6 a.m. the next day. Regardless of whether you feel like urinating or not, you must empty your bladder and collect the urine into a clean container. This is a complete 24-hour urine sample.

Second: Retain less urine

Some patients forget to catch their urine when they have a bowel movement, or they are so busy going out that they forget to collect their urine, which results in some urine not being retained.

Patients who need to collect a 24-hour urine specimen are advised not to go out on the day of the specimen collection. If they must go out, they must bring a urine container with them.

Third: Interference from diet and exercise

Because the excretion of proteinuria in the human body is affected by factors such as diet and exercise, you should pay attention to controlling these factors during urine retention. In order to retain urine, some patients will drink more water on the day of collecting the 24-hour urine sample. This is completely unnecessary. Patients only need to eat normally and do not need to drink more water or eat more or less protein and other nutrients.

Do not engage in strenuous exercise such as running, playing basketball, or playing football on the day of urine retention. Take antihypertensive drugs as usual. If you have fever, diarrhea, etc., it is recommended to wait until these conditions disappear before collecting urine.

Fourth: Pollution

A suitable container is very important. It is recommended to use a wide-mouth container with a certain degree of acid resistance, corrosion resistance, easy to clean and a lid to store urine.

The day before collecting the urine specimen, rinse it with clean water and drain it for later use. Female patients should avoid the menstrual period. If there is a lot of leucorrhea, it is recommended to keep a 24-hour urine sample and clean the perineum properly before each urination on the day, but do not only collect midstream urine.

Fifth: whether to add preservatives

If the patient keeps a 24-hour urine specimen only for testing urine protein or urine sodium, there is no need to add a preservative. However, it is recommended to place the container for storing urine samples in a cool place. If the indoor and outdoor temperatures are very high and you are worried, if your family does not mind, you can place the urine sample in the refrigerator at home (in fact, urine is very clean) for refrigeration.

If the patient wants to test the formed components or certain specific hormones or metabolites of a 24-hour urine specimen, different preservatives should be selected according to the different test items to prevent the decomposition of these substances.

Sixth: Alternatives

It is troublesome to collect urine samples for 24 hours, so you can choose to collect morning urine instead. In addition, elderly people with urinary incontinence or difficulty collecting urine, or children who urinate casually and cannot collect urine correctly and completely for 24 hours, can choose to collect morning urine for urine albumin-creatinine ratio (urine ACR) instead of 24-hour urine protein quantification, but it cannot replace other tests such as 24-hour urine sodium.

In short, if you want the test results to be accurate and reliable, standardizing the collection of urine samples is a crucial step!