La PCR como diagnóstico es una hez pinchada en un palo.
Ejemplo histórico del caos que puede generar un TIMOTEST PCR ...
Cough and chaos: A false outbreak of pertussis
May 1, 2007
Cough and chaos: A false outbreak of pertussis
When a day care worker reported to employee health at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH, with a severe, spasmatic cough that had lasted more than two weeks, an employee health nurse immediately thought of pertussis.
A lab worker reported similar symptoms, and soon there were other cases of concern. Some of them tested positive using PCR tests. The hospital posted advisories about respiratory hygiene and began screening employees and visitors for symptoms. The number of suspected cases rose, many of them conforming to the classic case definition for pertussis.
Within the next few months in the spring of 2006, the employee health department evaluated about 1,700 health care workers — 1,100 of them within a two-week timeframe. With help from volunteer nurses and physicians, they administered 3,599 Tdap vaccines, which had recently been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, covering 72% of the hospital staff in mass immunizations. They gave out 1,364 treatment doses of azithromycin and the lab performed 1,041 PCR tests.
Of 134 suspect cases, 98 had been identified as pertussis by PCR and 36 by the classic case definition. When none of the cases resulted in a positive culture, Dartmouth asked for volunteers to have their blood drawn for serology testing. Of 39 serology cases, only one showed a moderate level of anti-pertussis antibodies.
Employees were furloughed, home sick, or working with masks, while the hospital canceled some elective procedures and closed beds. The efforts were a tremendous success: Dart-mouth-Hitchcock effectively controlled a respiratory disease outbreak. But months later, the medical center received some stunning news. Not a single case of pertussis could be confirmed by culture, and only one case was confirmed through other testing. The New York Times dubbed it "the epidemic that wasn't."
Timotest basado en Timosecuencias.
