What does that mean?

I asked my doctor to check something out for me, down stairs and she said she would on the next visit because she had to do cultures anyways.

I'm a little confused because someone lead me to believe it was more blood work.

anyone?

I'm not much help hun, sorry

I've heard of people having "Cultures" to test for group b strep. Thats the only time I've heard of it.

Cultures from what I understand is normally run off your urine. If they suspect an infection its just a name for the process that they go through checking it. So you may of heard of blood cultures too.

My urine was sent off for cultures when it showed protien.

HTH

xx

Its something to do with obtaining samples and allowing the sample to grow and culture.
The sample will then be analysed under a microscope.

-I assume shes looking to see if the problem is bacterial, as bacteria can be identified this way in how the cells grow, specifically in how much the cells multiply within a specified time.

they can do cultures for different things in different ways. they might take a swab, and send it out for a culture if it has to do with your 'down there' parts

A culture can be done on ANYTHING... a plate, a toilet seat, a phone, urine, spit, blood etc. A swab of the surface or a sample of the liquid is swabbed onto growth mediums in petrie dishes and left to grow in perfect growing conditions for 24-48 hours (or longer).

Then as others have mentioned the dishes are then examined for visible growth, and microscope slides are made of the various growths and examined to determine what the growth is. They might even possibly do an antibiotic culture to determine the best antibiotic for the bacteria present.

For more information and pictures:


http://www.mclno.org/labpartners/mic...ial/sld001.htm

they check ur urine for protein as it could be a sign of pre-eclampsia or an infection -or dehydration as well--my midwife checks this every single visit

lets see another one they do to rule out pre-eclampsia is a 24 hr. urine catch to see how ur kidneys are working with blood work as well===not everyone has this one---i had it because i was constantly having symptoms of it but without the high blood pressure--- so i got lucky and tested neg. on this one

but they check u down below with a swab for the strep b --cause if u have it they have to administer antibiotics to protect the baby from gettting it (had this last week---at 35) ---this is completely routine and everyone gets checked for it

and they check ur blood work for anemia and gestational diabetes again and for a few other things---cant recall what they are---had this done maybe 4-5 weeks ago--- i think its done somewhere between 25-28 weeks ---and everyone gets checked for this one as well ---cause if u have gestational diabetes they may have to help u to control it so u dont have a really large baby (course u could have a large baby without the diabetes thing anyway) ---i have diabetes in the family so i was tested for this twice ---so the other time i tested for it was like 8 weeks or something ---so really early on and then again a few weeks ago