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Comparison Between Gram Stain And Culture For The Characterization Of Vaginal Microflora: Definition Of A Distinct Grade That Resembles Grade I Microflora And Revised Categorization Of Grade I Microflora, Rita Verhelst, Hans Verstraelen, Geert Claeys, Gerda Verschraegen, Leen Van Simaey, Catharine De Ganck, Ellen De Backer, Marleen Temmerman, Mario Vaneechoutte

Obstetrics and Gynaecology, East Africa

Background: The microbiological diagnosis of bacterial vaginosis is usually made using Nugent's criteria, a useful but rather laborious scoring system based on counting bacterial cell types on Gram stained slides of vaginal smears. Ison and Hay have simplified the score system to three categories and added a fourth category for microflora with a predominance of the Streptococcus cell type. Because in the Nugent system several cell types are not taken into account for a final score, we carried out a detailed assessment of the composition of the vaginal microflora in relation to standard Gram stain in order the improve the …