Katerina Hadjigeorgiou1, Evdokia Kastanos2, Costas Pitris1
16:00 - 16:15 | Thu 10 Nov | Maya III | ThBT2.2
Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) are some of the most common bacterial diseases, especially in women, resulting in millions of hospital visits and a cost of 1.6 billion dollars every year in the US alone. Currently diagnosis is performed with two sequential urine cultures, for species identification and antibiotic susceptibility testing, which require a total of 48 hrs. The limitations of the current diagnostic scheme can be overcome by the development of a Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) based tool. The proposed technology can: (i) identify the presence of bacteria (correctly quantifies the concentration and separates the bacteurimic samples), (ii) classify the causative bacteria (~94% correct classification), and (iii) determine the sensitivity of the bacteria to various antibiotics (81-100% correct classification depending on the antibiotic). Based on these results, SERS can be used for complete, fast, accurate, and inexpensive POCT for urinary tract and other bacterial infections.