Response Biomedical Corp. (fka RPBIF)

[urche]

The problem of identifying staph carriers may prove to be more important than one might think.

Especially, the high negative predictive value provides a screening tool to rapidly and accurately identify patients who are at low risk of developing a S. aureus infection after surgery, thus allowing for more targeted use of antibiotics and other infection control measures.

Most tests can't provide both high sensitivity and specificity. In the case of screening for staph, the high negative predictive value is the more important parameter. This is because institutions increasingly want to know if their patients need to be placed on contact precautions (at considerable expense and inconvenience) or need antibiotics to eradicate staph carrier state.

My feeling is that a test that can quickly identify patients negative for staph would fill a valuable niche. The current routine in the hospitals where I work is to send cultures from 3-4 sites, including a nasal swab. The results come back about 3 days later at a cost of several hundred dollars. A quicker, dependable result would be a tremendous boon to institutions caring for these patients.

Unfortunately, as far as i can tell the Response/3M test is not specific for MRSA, the multiply resistant form of staph which is much more important information that whether staph is present or not. So, the rapid test won't replace cultures altogether.

Urche