He had broken one of the rules. Volunteers must present a clean bill of health, and Joe's annual prison tuberculin skin test had turned out positive. That meant he was out.Joe took his plight to a specialist who
redid the skin test -- which he described as notoriously unreliable. Then for another kind of test, he took a blood sample.After the third visit
the results of the blood test were in -- negative!The author of the story continues
it all ended well. But it got me thinking that it's not too often that one of our MedPage Today stories personally hits home.Always worth reading the comments
The story TB Blood Tests Outperform Skin Test was one of them.
It's a report of two new blood tests for tuberculosis -- one was the test Joe received from the pulmonologist, the QuantiFERON-TB Gold (QFT-IT) -- that are less likely to lie to you. When they say you're positive for TB, you're actually more likely to really have it.
Because I live and work in a border town (and Mexico has TB) our hospital has already switched to the blood test - on the hospital's dime.
-- Posted by linda m hamilton
As an employee of a medical center, I am required to undergo annual TB testing and I would be far happier with a blood test than the injection of foreign substances into my body on principle. Unfortunately, if we want the blood testing instead of the skin test, we have to pay for it out of pocket and travel to a distant location. Hopefully the blood tests will become standard of care in very short order!
-- Posted by Cyndi Rosenblatt
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