Screening and Syndromic Approaches to Identify Gonorrhea and Chlamydial Infection among Women

The standard diagnostic tools to identify sexually transmitted infections are often expensive and have laboratory and infrastructure requirements that make them unavailable to family planning and primary health-care clinics in developing countries. Therefore, inexpensive, accessible tools that rely...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in Family Planning 2000-03, Vol.31 (1), p.55-68
Main Authors: Sloan, Nancy L., Winikoff, Beverly, Haberland, Nicole, Coggins, Christa, Elias, Christopher
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abdominal pain
Algorithms
Approaches
Chlamydia
Chlamydia Infections - diagnosis
Chlamydia trachomatis
Condoms
Diagnosis
False positive errors
Female
Gonorrhea
Gonorrhea - diagnosis
Gonorrhoea
Health aspects
Health screening
Humans
Infections
Mass Screening - methods
Medical screening
Population
Predisposing factors
Risk Factors
Screening
Screening tests
Sexually transmitted disease diagnosis
Sexually transmitted diseases
Symptoms
Vaginal discharge
Women
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Summary:The standard diagnostic tools to identify sexually transmitted infections are often expensive and have laboratory and infrastructure requirements that make them unavailable to family planning and primary health-care clinics in developing countries. Therefore, inexpensive, accessible tools that rely on symptoms, signs, and/or risk factors have been developed to identify and treat reproductive tract infections without the need for laboratory diagnostics. Studies were reviewed that used standard diagnostic tests to identify gonorrhea and cervical chlamydial infection among women and that provided adequate information about the usefulness of the tools for screening. Aggregation of the studies' results suggest that risk factors, algorithms, and risk scoring for syndromic management are poor indicators of gonorrhea and chlamydial infection in samples of both low and high prevalence and, consequently, are not effective mechanisms with which to identify or manage these conditions. The development and evaluation of other approaches to identify gonorrhea and chlamydial infections, including inexpensive and simple laboratory screening tools, periodic universal treatment, and other alternatives must be given priority.
ISSN:0039-3665
1728-4465
DOI:10.1111/j.1728-4465.2000.00055.x