There is a need for affordable point‐of‐care (POC) tests to accurately detect significant bacteriuria in dogs and cats.

Such tests may help practitioners in limiting unnecessary empirical antimicrobial treatment while improving patient outcome.

The aim of the study was to compare a lateral flow immunoassay POC (RapidBac™Vet) for detection of bacteriuria, to standard aerobic quantitative bacterial culture (QBC) at a reference laboratory.

The study was designed as a prospective cohort study. Urine samples were collected from dogs and cats presenting to the University Hospital for Companion Animals. Samples were subjected in parallel to RapidBacVet and QBC. POC results were interpreted by six investigators blinded to the gold standard results for coefficient of variation calculations.

Surplus urine samples from 79 dogs and 21 cats were included (58% by cystocentesis). Forty‐four samples yielded ≥1000 colony forming units (CFU)/ml on QBC, of which 20 yielded heavy growth (≥100 000 CFU/mL). POC sensitivity and specificity and positive and negative predictive values were 71%, 77%, 71% and 77%, respectively. Eight of the 13 false negative samples grew Staphylococcus spp. By applying a cut‐off of ≥100 000 CFU/mL, sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive values changed to 80%, 65%, 36% and 93%, respectively. The intra‐assay and inter‐rater coefficients of variation were 1.4‐3.23% and 83%, respectively.

These results suggest that RapidBac™Vet is of limited value as a sole discriminatory test for urinary tract infection. A negative test result does not rule out urinary tract infection but may justify withholding of antimicrobial therapy pending the urine culture result.