Publications

Background

With the wide variety of known respiratory pathogens, it can be difficult for a physician to determine optimal patient management based upon clinical symptoms alone. Physicians must consider whether the infection is bacterial, viral, or even a true infection, decide whether it is appropriate to prescribe antimicrobials empirically, decide which diagnostic test(s) should be ordered, and decide whether the necessary diagnostic results will be available in time to make the best management decisions for the patient. Given that these challenges can lead to the inappropriate or unnecessary use of antimicrobials, it is imperative that clinical laboratories equip themselves with the appropriate diagnostic tools to support the decision-making process of the physician. The emergence of multiplexed molecular respiratory panels has improved the clinical laboratory's ability to accommodate physician needs; however, the currently available molecular tests, in their fixed panel, fixed cost structure, are a potential burden to laboratory workflow and costs and patient healthcare costs. Verigene Respiratory Pathogens Flex Test (RP Flex) is being designed with physician and clinical laboratory needs in mind, providing laboratories with a broad panel of respiratory pathogens in a format where individual tests can be customized to physician testing needs. We validated the microarray-based, sample-to-result RP Flex Test for the detection and identification of viral and bacterial causes of respiratory infection from a nasopharyngeal swab (NPS) specimen.