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- Title
Can we manage demand for allergy testing by restricting requests to a small number of prime target allergens?
- Authors
Reynolds, Timothy M.; Twomey, Patrick J.
- Abstract
Background: Demand for expensive tests such as allergen-specific IgE is expanding far faster than for cheaper tests: at Burton Hospital the annual growth rate is 24%. Different hospitals have different policies on allergen testing. We report a comparison of the effect of requesting policy on diagnostic yield. Methods: All results from five years of allergen testing were downloaded from the data warehouse at Burton, and a representative sample of recent results was evaluated from Ipswich Hospital. Statistical analysis by χ2 test and significance tests for differences of proportions were carried out. Results: Ipswich hospital used a standard four-allergen panel for respiratory patients and demonstrated a statistically significantly lower positivity rate for three of those four allergens. No relationship between the number of allergens tested and the probability of a positive result was shown – the probability of a positive result was approximately 0.3. Number of allergen-specific IgE tests requested/patient have remained roughly constant over 51/2 years but total demand has increased.Conclusions: Selective requesting for allergen-specific IgE testing may be more effective than use of a standard panel but this cannot be conclusively proven. It is not appropriate to attempt to limit workload by specifying a maximum number of tests that are allowed for any individual patient.
- Subjects
ALLERGY diagnosis; RADIOALLERGOSORBENT test; ALLERGENS; ETIOLOGY of diseases; ENVIRONMENTALLY induced diseases
- Publication
Annals of Clinical Biochemistry, 2007, Vol 44, Issue 5, p467
- ISSN
0004-5632
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1258/000456307781645987