Objective: to study the value of some common symptoms/group of symptoms in diagnosing the cause of Candida in vaginitis. Methods: collect and analyze of clinical data and results of direct examination of vaginal discharge from 196 patients examined at Obstetrics Clinic, 103 Hospital from May to July 2013. | Journal of military pharmaco-medicine 7-2013 DIAGNOSTIC VALUE OF SOME COMMON SYMPTOMS OF VULVOVAGINAL CANDIDIASIS Le Tran Anh*; Trinh Thi Thu Huong** Summary Vulvovaginitis is a common disease in women, mainly caused by bacteria, fungi or trichomonas Accurate diagnosis of the cause of disease helps treat effectively. Objective: to study the value of some common symptoms/group of symptoms in diagnosing the cause of Candida in vaginitis. Methods: collect and analyze of clinical data and results of direct examination of vaginal discharge from 196 patients examined at Obstetrics Clinic, 103 Hospital from May to July 2013. Results: the common symptoms/signs in women with vaginal candidiasis were vaginal discharge (), pruritus (), swelling (89%). The appearance of vaginal discharge was highly sensitive for fungal vaginitis () but low specificity (). Discharge characteristics were of little value in diagnosing vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC). Swelling, itching signs had high sensitivity ( and ) but low specificity while perineal dermatitis and worse before menstruation had relatively high specificity ( and ) but low sensitivity. The combination of symptoms raised the specificity but reduced the sensitivity. The combination with highest specificity was vaginal pain and perineal dermatitis (), pain worse before menstruationd (), itching and perineal dermatitis (). Conclusion: Accuracy diagnosis of predicting VVC has been demonstrated to be low if based only on clinical findings without laboratory confirmation. * Key words: Vaginitis, Candida; Sensitivity; Specificity; Positive predictive value; Negative predictive value. Introduction Vulvovaginitis constitutes one of the most common problems in clinical medicine. Bacterial vaginosis, candidiasis and trichomoniasis are responsible for 90% of cases of infectious origin. Candida species caused 20 to 25% of the cases of infectious vulvovaginitis, ranked second only .
