Dr. Robert Whitfield argues infection testing still relies on 1950s standards using urine samples and symptoms. Modern PCR can identify bacteria, fungi, and mycobacteria in urine with high accuracy, but most clinics haven't adopted it yet.
The parameters by which we measure and categorize an infection have existed since 1950, and they were done on urine specimens based on symptoms. So when someone, you know, for instance, a patient comes to us and they're like, they have recurrent urinary tract infections, I'm like, well, we can send the urine off and get a PCR analysis of it so you'll know exactly what's in there. I cannot tell you whether or not that's exactly what's causing your continued problem, but if it's from bacteria, fungus, mycobacteria, it will show up on this. And they're like, really? They're like, why don't they have us do that? That's not the standard of care. Yeah. But for me, it's my standard is not to use things from 1950 to make an interpretation of data. Yeah, we've moved beyond that. So I don't, you know, for everybody listening, PCR testing, sensitive-specific, has been around, you know, forever, became commercial, you know, not that long ago, but we really haven't caught up to what we should be doing at the, you know, standard patient care level with it since it's a commercially available testing platform, really.
