Diagnosis of infectious diseases with point-of-care assays

Diagnosis of infectious diseases with point-of-care assays represents a growing proportion of all microbiology testing performed today. Very little of this testing is performed on hospitalized patients, however, which is a major difference from clinical chemistry and hematology point-of-care testing. Almost all of the microbiology testing is conducted on specimens obtained from ambulatory patients seen in hospital emergency departments, clinics, and private practice settings. Many of these tests are neither strikingly sensitive nor specific when compared to standard laboratory assays. As such, results from these tests are clinically helpful when a patient's history and physical examination either strongly suggests or rules out a particular diagnosis. This review focuses on the assays currently available for detection of microbial antigens, enzymatic activities, or antibodies in specimens at the point-of-care.