Laboratory Strategies to Improve Allergy First-Line Screening in Primary Care.

Area of Science:

• Clinical immunology
• Laboratory medicine

Background:

• Current first-line allergy screening protocols lack standardization.
• Increasing demand strains clinical laboratory resources.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce a novel protocol for initial allergy screening.
• Assess benefits of this protocol for patients, healthcare systems, and payers.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective observational study of 4359 primary care allergy testing requests.
• Interventions included overriding redundant serum IgE (sIgE) tests for specific allergens and mixes.
• Added testing for prevalent allergens.

Main Results:

• Successfully avoided 683 unnecessary tests.
• Canceled 2186 tests for milk and egg components.
• Added 561 tests for allergen mixes and 942 for allergen extracts.

Conclusions:

• Allergy laboratories can actively manage testing demand.
• Implementation of a structured protocol leads to optimized allergy diagnosis.