Listen on DB entry

I was unable to find an answer to this question, hopefully I haven't overlooked it.

As part of my test plan, I need to check for the existance on a DB entry (that was created as a result of previous test step).
Currently, this is implemented with a simple Delay, is there any better way to do that by looping a query with count(*) of some sort and waiting for the DB to get updated so that the test is less impacted by the delay and the current system response time?

Thanks.