Diagnostic approaches to infectious diseases

Different diagnostic tests are available for the diagnosis of infectious diseases, and the appropriate choice of testing may vary with what is available for the infectious disease in question, stage of infection, host related factors, infectious disease burden, etc. This creates a myriad of choices of tests that may be challenging to navigate, and to interpret when conflicting results are obtained from different diagnostic tests for the same patient. The prevalence of the disease and risk of exposure will also impact on your choices. Finally, as with all tests, false positives and false negative results can occur and we will discuss common causes and examples for false positive and false negatives when using inhouse screening methods. In this session we will discuss all these complexities, different diagnostic modalities, and their interpretation, while supported by varied cases examples.

• - Different diagnostic modalities are available for the diagnosis of infectious diseases, with appropriate choices varying depending on clinical question;
• - Different diagnostic tests may be appropriate for confirming or ruling out the presence of an infectious disease;
• - Different diagnostic tests may be needed or be appropriate depending on the course of the infection, infectious organism burden, or health status of the patient;
• - Different combination of tests may be needed (e.g. screening and confirmatory tests) for the accurate diagnosis of infectious disease;