Talk:Clinical case definition

Scope and content of the article

The page currently fails to identify a key usage of the term: "A set of diagnostic criteria that must be fulfilled in order to identify a person as a case of a particular disease." (Dictionary of Epidemiology, ed. Last, 4th edition, page 24). But I feel it isn't a simple task to edit this in, given the way the stub is currently arranged. So I suppose I'd better append one of those horrible clean up tags to alert readers that all may not be as it seems here. —MistyMORN 11:20, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Correction made

There was a mention of * Centor criteria for strep throat, but this is completely incorrect. The Centor criteria are screening criteria. They indicate when diagnostic testing is needed, possibly useful, or where unlikely to alter treatment, perhaps even be misleading (e.g a routine antigen rapid strep test misses some cases and if your pre-test probability is high enough, a negative rapid strep would not always push you to a level of risk of disease to exclude it. As such, they are not the diagnostic criteria. The diagnostic criteria for strep pharyngitis is exudative tonsilopharyngitis w/ documented rise in anti-streptococcal antibodies. The diagnostic criteria for strep throat does NOT traditionally involve culture results, but the increased sensitivity of PCR eliminates the false negative results (often associated with poor sample collection technique, although several other factors including transport of samples and even what culture media is used) affect yield. It also doesn't account for those who are transiently colonized or have chronic colonization who happen to have a pharyngitis due to another cause. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrKC MD (talk • contribs) 02:42, 13 December 2024 (UTC)