Due to its speed, accuracy and cost‐effectiveness, microscopy has become an integral part of clinical examination for disease diagnosis. However, modern microscopes are very costly and require skilled personnel for their operation and maintenance, and specimen processing and analysis is labour‐intensive. Further, lack of such expensive diagnostic tools in remote areas is a serious concern. Affordable point‐of‐care diagnostic tools are the most useful for timely disease diagnosis and management. The Foldscope is an affordable origami‐based microscopy device composed of a series of paper clippings, which, upon assembly, can hold a specimen slide for observation, and this specimen can be viewed via a mobile phone camera attached to it. The present study evaluated the use of the Foldscope in the clinical diagnosis of oral and urinary tract infections and evaluated its efficacy as a motivational tool for improving oral health among school children in India. We qualitatively compared the Foldscope to a clinical microscope by examining five different types of clinical samples. Of the different types of clinical samples, the Foldscope was effective in detecting infection in dental plaque samples and urine samples. Thus, we further analysed 31 dental plaque samples of patients aged 3–13 years and 25 urine samples of patients aged 11–62 years. We also evaluated the use of the Foldscope as an educational tool for motivating oral hygiene among 80 school children aged 12 years and found that students in the Foldscope intervention group had better measures of oral hygiene than did students in the nonintervention group. In summary, our study indicated that the Foldscope is useful in detecting urinary tract infections and kidney stones in urine samples and is a useful motivational tool for oral health education among school‐aged children. Furthermore, it may also be useful in oral health monitoring in resource poor settings.

中文翻译：

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Foldscope 作为口腔和尿路感染的主要诊断工具及其在口腔健康教育中的有效性

由于其速度、准确性和成本效益，显微镜已成为疾病诊断临床检查的一个组成部分。然而，现代显微镜非常昂贵，需要熟练的人员进行操作和维护，样本处理和分析是劳动密集型的。此外，偏远地区缺乏这种昂贵的诊断工具是一个严重的问题。负担得起的即时诊断工具对于及时诊断和管理疾病最有用。Foldscope 是一种经济实惠的基于折纸的显微镜设备，由一系列剪纸组成，组装后可以容纳样品载玻片进行观察，并且可以通过连接在其上的手机摄像头查看该样品。本研究评估了 Foldscope 在口腔和尿路感染的临床诊断中的使用，并评估了其作为改善印度学童口腔健康的激励工具的功效。我们通过检查五种不同类型的临床样本，定性地将 Foldscope 与临床显微镜进行了比较。在不同类型的临床样本中，Foldscope 可有效检测牙菌斑样本和尿液样本中的感染。因此，我们进一步分析了 31 个 3-13 岁患者的牙菌斑样本和 25 个 11-62 岁患者的尿液样本。我们还评估了使用 Foldscope 作为促进 80 名 12 岁学童口腔卫生的教育工具的情况，发现 Foldscope 干预组的学生比非干预组的学生具有更好的口腔卫生措施。总之，我们的研究表明，Foldscope 可用于检测尿样中的尿路感染和肾结石，并且是学龄儿童口腔健康教育的有用激励工具。此外，它还可用于资源匮乏环境中的口腔健康监测。