New Diagnostic Tests

A diagnostic test is a procedure to confirm or determine the presence of disease especially in a person who shows signs and symptoms or after medical reports that show possible existence of a condition. The purpose of a diagnostic test is to gather clinical information to enable a physician to make a diagnosis. X-rays, pregnancy tests, biopsies and medical results from physical examinations are some examples of diagnostic tests.

Diagnostic tests have been there for a while but here are some of the new diagnostic criteria.

Researchers have developed a new type of blood test that detects eight common types of cancer including the elusive pancreatic and liver cancer. It uses artificial intelligence to generate an algorithm for analyzing a combination of genes and protein biomarkers in a blood sample to identify the likely type of cancer in a patient. The purpose is to help doctors to use the method for spotting cancers at its early stages even before the onset of symptoms to improve the chances of successful treatment and survival. The test also finds some compounds that could be early signs of cancer in the blood including 16 different cancer genes that trigger tumors and eight proteins.

Xpert MTB/RIF is a diagnostic test for detecting tuberculosis including the most resistance form. It utilizes molecular technology whose original purpose was to identify anthrax in the United States postal services, but countries such as South Africa are adopting it for revolutionary TB detection. Xpert MTB/RIF is a rapid automated nucleic acid amplification test that has become the first breakthrough in TB diagnostics since the development of sputum smear microscopy over 100 years ago.

It will be essential in detecting the disease where it is highly prevalent and a primary cause of death among patients with HIV infection. Xpert MTB/RIF is better than sputum smear microscopy because it has poor sensitivity in people with HIV or the sputum culture that takes 3-6 weeks to yield the primary results and even longer to produce drug susceptibility test results. This test detects Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its resistance to rifampicin, a drug the doctors use to treat TB in less than two hours.

There have been these improvements to the imaging technology.

Positron emission tomography (PET) is not a new concept, but its use has changed after combination with CT scanning in a device. PET scans for cancer test involves the use of nuclear medicine because doctors inject radioactive in small dose into a patient before the test. PET images biological functions like glucose metabolism or blood flow, unlike other imaging technologies that look at tissue or organs. PET picks metabolic changes that occur due to cancer earlier than it takes to notice physical changes in organs or tumors. It is a significant advance that shows anatomic details of a CT and metabolic information of PET at once to give doctors a broader view of the condition.

Angiography is the examination of blood vessels that in the past required insertion of a catheter into an artery and injection of contrast material a substance that allows simpler noticing of the tissue. It takes hours, often involves the use of sedatives and increases chances of bleeding or blood clots. CT Angiography allows a non-invasive way of getting similar information, and it only takes 10 -25 minutes to get the results.

Digital mammography helps to produce similar results for breast cancer screening to the traditional mammograms but within a shorter period as it does not require the use of film and x-rays. Digital mammograms are more straightforward and faster to perform while the digital format enables doctors to send images to medical centers o other experts in an instant.

The range of new diagnostic tests continues to continually evolve a researcher for better methods of detecting symptoms and allow early detection of rare conditions such as Zika.