When we fall sick and go to the hospital, doctors usually perform a diagnostic test based on the symptoms we describe. A correct diagnosis almost always translates into an appropriate treatment plan for the patient, which could not only improve the patient outcome but can also save lives.
However, back in the day, we didn’t have as much luck as we do today when it came to diagnosing diseases accurately. Sometimes, it was quite difficult to diagnose diseases based on symptoms alone. It was always a shot in the dark. A calculated guess, at best.
Unfortunately, even with the advent of modern medicine, most people still get misdiagnosed at least once in their lifetime. A misdiagnosis could either be a delayed diagnosis or an inaccurate one, neither being any good for the patient. A delayed diagnosis means delayed treatment while an inaccurate diagnosis would cause the prescription of unnecessary or even harmful treatment for the patient.
This is exactly why medical diagnostic equipment came into play. To help clinicians diagnose infections accurately.
Diagnostic Equipment
But what exactly is diagnostic equipment?
These are tools designed to measure and observe various aspects of a patient’s health to help clinicians diagnose the patient’s condition accurately.
Based on the patient’s symptoms, a doctor would know the appropriate diagnostic equipment to use.
Although they don’t always guarantee a perfect diagnosis, they significantly improve the odds, which means the patient stands a much better chance of receiving the right treatment.
Perhaps the most recognizable diagnostic tool would be a stethoscope. Almost all doctors have one hanging over their necks, at least in a hospital setting they do. It makes it easy to listen to heart sounds or blood flow in the lungs, arteries and veins. Besides being a symbol of the doctor’s profession, it comes in quite handy in diagnosing heart disease, pneumonia and bronchitis, in addition to a lot more diseases.
However, if we were to take a more in-depth look at all medical diagnostic equipment available today, we would eventually come by much more complex instruments.
So let’s get right to it.
Immunoassays
When it comes to accurate detection of diseases, immunoassays do come in quite handy. These are tests used to detect the presence and quantity of a specific antibody in blood or other bodily fluids.
When we fall sick, say an antigen (a toxin or some other foreign substance) has somehow invaded the body, our immune system swings into action and produces antibodies.
These antibodies are highly specific, which means that they bind to a specific antigen only. This is the immune response to the perceived threat. Therefore, by finding specific antibodies associated with a particular antigen in a sample, health professionals are able to make a pretty accurate diagnosis.
As much as immunoassays have completely revolutionized medical diagnosis, we’ve been unable to conclusively tell bacterial and viral infections apart for a very long time. Accurately predicting how severe a covid-19 case is likely to be hasn’t been an easy undertaking as well.
Well, at least not until MeMed, a leading host-response diagnostics company, came into the picture.
As opposed to trying to find the microbe itself, the MeMed BV test measures and integrates the levels of 3 key biomarkers associated with both bacterial and viral infections.
A spike or drop in the levels of either of these proteins conclusively shows whether a patient has a viral or bacterial infection.
Their Covid-19 Severity Test, on the other hand, measures and computationally integrates the levels of these key biomarkers and assigns a simple score that expressly predicts just how severe a case of covid-19 is likely to be.
When both of these tests are run on the MeMed key platform, a one-of-a-kind medical diagnostic equipment, you can expect accurate results in as little as 15 minutes.
To summarize, from enabling routine everyday medical checkups to helping health providers diagnose infections accurately, it’s pretty evident just how much innovative medical technologies have aided healthcare delivery worldwide.
