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

There are nonestablished protocols in use for first-line allergy screening based on IgE testing. These protocols attempt to address an unmet need for sustainability of clinical laboratories, at a time when demand is increasing.

To present a novel protocol for first-line allergy screening and to evaluate the implementation benefits for patients, the health care system, and payers.

We carried out an observational retrospective study analyzing 4359 interventions on primary care testing requests. Interventions included overriding redundant serum IgE (sIgE) testing for allergen mixes, extracts included in mixes, low-prevalence extracts, and milk and egg molecular components without previous positive results when exposed to extracts. We also added prevalent allergen testing.

The strategy saved 683 tests from being performed unnecessarily. Test volume decline was primarily driven by the cancelation of 2186 egg and milk components tests; 561 tests were added for mixes, together with 942 allergen extracts tests.

The results of this study show how the allergy laboratory plays a key role in actively managing demand for sIgE testing, leading to optimized diagnosis.