Urinary erythrocyte morphology in acute glomerulonephritis

Recent reports emphasise the importance of examining the morphological features of erythrocytes in urine as an aid to determining their origin (glomerular or non-glomerular).'3 Finding pronounced distortion of the majority of the erythrocytes favours a glomerular origin and might be especially helpful for diagnosing glomerulonephritis in patients presenting without erythrocyte casts or proteinuria. In two recent blind controlled studies this test had a diagnostic specificity and sensitivity of over 9g0o".2 3 To our knowledge, however, no serial study of the morphological characteristics of urinary erythrocytes has been carried out in cases of acute glomerulonephritis. We present such a study in one case.