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BENCHMARK LABORATORIES
PANELS

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HOW CAN BENCHMARK'S PANELS HELP ME

RAPID RESULTS

Our panels allow us to provide results within 24 hours of specimen collection for most tests and clinics. With results in hours rather than days, our providers can intervene earlier in the infection cycle, where treatments tend to be of greater efficacy. Earlier treatment is better for the patient, where intervention can reduce sequelae and may diminish the risk of disease progression.

Sensitive Results

The increased sensitivity of our panels over traditional methods means that our clinicians get results earlier in the infection cycle, allowing them to begin treatment earlier. This helps prevent repeat visits where symptomology came with negative lab values. Moreover, PCR is highly sensitive and can help identify latent infections where the pathogen load has dropped below the detection limit of traditional methods or in conditions where the patient’s immune response has damaged the organisms too severely for them to grow under conventional techniques.

IDENTITFY DIFFICULT PATHOGENS

Traditional microbiological methods rely on collecting the pathogen from a patient and then culturing or growing for direct measure in the clinical laboratory. While these techniques were a vast improvement over prior methods, they have severe limitations in sensitivity, specificity, accuracy and precision, which are overcome by molecular diagnostic testing. For example:
01
A number of human pathogens are fastidious (e.g. grow poorly or only under very specific conditions) or do not grow at all with accepted techniques, but are readily detected by our panels because molecular techniques are not dependent on microbe growth.
02
Some pathogens cannot be identified in the laboratory following exposure to ambient collection and transport conditions in the outpatient setting (i.e. anaerobic bacteria, trichomonas vaginalis), but their remnants are preserved by our collection kits so we can readily detect them.
03
Other pathogens are measured directly, but can be missed due to low sensitivity of traditional assays , whereas the amplifying power of PCR makes them readily detectable (i.e. low titers of syphilis).

ATYPICAL PRESENTATION

One of the greatest strengths of our panels is that the technology is so specific that if the organism is present, it will be identified, even in cases of atypical presentation. The rise of molecular testing with rapid turn around times gives clinicians a new tool for identifying atypical presentation of a well known pathogen when a new strain arises. This is of particular value with organisms that change rapidly and whose presentation can vary significantly.

For example, identification of a mild, atypical Influenza B strain in a susceptible individual could allow for pharmaceutical intervention, but distinguishing that flu B from other viruses that are wildly circulating in the same population can be difficult based solely on symptomology at the early stages of infection.