Evaluación de los métodos utilizados para el diagnóstico de vaginosis bacteriana en el Hospital Regional ISSSTE Puebla

of reproductive age. The diagnosis can be ma de by applying clinical criteria or by the eva-luation of bacterial morphotypes present in Gram stain performed to vaginal secretion or by microbiological procedures, which were deve loped as an alternative to clinical diagnosis, gradually replacing it. The objective of this work was to determine the effectiveness of the Amsel and Ison-Hay methods, used for the diagnosis of bacterial vaginosis using the Nugent method as a standard. In this study, 3 05 samples of vaginal discharge from pa tients of the ISSSTE Puebla Regional Hospital were analyzed. The samples were processed and analyzed for the diagnosis of BV following the recommendations of the Amsel, Nugent and Ison-Hay methods. The analysis of the results indicated 12.8 % by Nugent, 31.1 % of BV by the Amsel method and 36.7 % by Ison-Hay; suggesting that both techniques show a high rate of false positives. The sensitivity for the Amsel and Ison-Hay method was 97.44 %, the specificity was 78.57 % and 72.18 % for Amsel and Ison-Hay, respectively. In conclusion, given the results obtained and the minimal differences between the analyzed methods, it is recommended to perform the Amsel criteria, followed by the observation of Gram staining of the vaginal flow for the assessment of the microbiota by the Ison-Hay method, to have a better diagnosis of BV, when the Nugent method is not used.