What Is Infectious Disease Testing?
Symptoms aren’t always straightforward. In some instances, your patients may have confounding cases. For these situations, our team at Catalyst Diagnostic Laboratory can help. With infectious disease panels and testing, you can check your patients for a variety of conditions. Continue reading to learn more about infectious disease testing!
Background
Infectious disease testing is fairly self-explanatory in the sense that labs test to identify various infectious diseases. These lab tests can help determine the type of infection a person may have and which solutions will be effective against it. Infectious disease lab tests look for antigens, antibodies, viruses, bacteria, fungi, or other microbes in the blood, urine, or tissues.
Types of Infectious Disease Tests
Depending on the type of infectious disease lab test, samples may be taken from blood, saliva, urine, stool, sputum, cerebral spinal fluid (CSF), tissue biopsy specimens, or lymph node aspirate. Some lab tests look for cells that are attacked by infectious diseases. Other lab tests look for infectious agents such as sexually transmitted diseases, parasites, or urinary tract infections.
Rapid Diagnostic Tests
As suggested by their name, rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) produce results quickly. For example, we provide rapid COVID testing in our diagnostic laboratory, so you can get results back within 24 hours. This process includes the lab receiving the sample, processing the sample, and getting it to a lab technician for culturing or analysis.
Point-of-Care Tests
RDTs are also described as point-of-care (POC) tests. These tests aren’t constituted by certain criteria, but they focus on simplicity and efficiency. These lateral-flow, immunochromatographic tests are ideal for infectious disease testing because they detect infections on the spot.
Don’t put your patients in further danger by waiting for questionable findings. Choose Catalyst Diagnostic in Lansing, Michigan for fast, reliable results from our infectious disease testing. Learn more about our testing today.
