When do you recommend limited or targeted respiratory pathogen testing versus a full respiratory pathogen panel in a patient presenting with URI symptoms?

I think we’re asking the wrong group of people. How infectious disease physicians use respiratory pathogen panels is not the same as how emergency medicine or urgent care clinicians use them. For stewards of diagnostics, especially ID providers, the test often doesn’t change management. In many sett...

When the RPP came out, I, then still a molecular virologist, thought, "Wow, this test is really going to help me practice ID." I thought I could figure out who was at risk for secondary bacterial infection and, sometimes, diagnose a bacterial pathogen I could treat. I couldn't have been much more wr...

For this question, I start with several factors in mind: how sick is the patient, where is the clinical encounter taking place (office vs inpatient hospital vs ICU), what are the patient specific risk factors that would put them at risk for more severe disease, and how does the testing impact treatm...

This was an excellent question and an excellent discussion from the respondents. It displays the confusion in the medical world regarding appropriate testing and provides great recommendations on how best to use the RPP.