Study Status: Completed
Recruit Status: Completed
Study Type: Interventional
Official Title: The Impact of Respiratory Pathogen PCR Assay on Treatment of Adult Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Brief Summary:
Viral respiratory infections are common and often require use of health care resources. Patients receive inappropriate bacterial antibiotics, which has many problems including side-effects, development of resistance and costs.
A small portion of the infections leads to severe clinical manifestations including hospitalisations and deaths. The significance of influenza virus is well known and it is actively detected in all age groups. However, the benefits of detecting other respiratory viruses have mainly been studied among children but not among adults. The development of multiplex PCR technique has provided a new and sensitive method for diagnosing a large panel of viruses. To convince the economical benefits of the rapid viral diagnostic in adult infectious patient, more evidence is needed.
In our randomized study, nasal and pharyngeal samples from the patients evaluated at the emergency clinic of internal medicine in the University Hospital of Oulu because of any respiratory symptom, chest pain or fever, will be collected. The samples will be tested for 16 different respiratory viruses by using Anyplex TMII RV16 Detection. The adult participants will be randomized in two groups. In one group the results of the testing will be reported for the attending physician as soon as possible, and in the other group 7 days after sampling. The effect of this delay to patient care is monitored. Also the results of children and adults are compared as well as results of men and women. The hypothesis is that rapid viral diagnostics shortens the length of admission and diminishes the use of bacterial antibiotics. New information on the viral epidemiology among children and adults is provided and clinical manifestations of specific viral infections in adults are described.
The estimated 1