It’s been almost two full years of the Covid-19 pandemic and we’re still talking about testing. And as was the case in the early weeks and months, testing has once again become valuable. With several thousand people in the U. S. In the U. S. Department of Homeland Security who tested positive for the Omicron variant every day, it remains complicated to access immediate antigen tests, and even more complicated to get immediate effects for PCR tests at testing sites. One challenge that has decreased considerably is the likelihood of nasal swab-related injuries. largely due to the improved capabilities of the testers, but also due to the fact that many of them perform self-checks and are less likely to cause serious damage.
But one of the drawbacks of self-tests, as well as tests performed by untrained users, is the limited wisdom of intranasal and nasopharyngeal anatomy. The inner part of the nose remains a mystery to many, and the nasopharynx, the domain at the back. of the nose, the palate of the mouth, is a lower region that few, besides otolaryngologists (ear, nose and throat specialists), address.
There were serious injuries due to the nasal swabs going wrong. In October 2020, I reported for Forbes on a case in which a nasal swab inadvertently punctured a small domain near the brain in a woman who had undergone sinus surgery twenty years earlier. This resulted in a leak of cerebrospinal fluid, which was fortunately detected and repaired temporarily. The following month, I sat down with Dr. Robert Glatter to talk about how a Covid-19 control swab came off a patient’s tracheostomy tube, requiring airway pressure surgery to recover.
An organization from Helsinki University Hospital in Finland recently published its insights into severe injuries caused by Covid-19 nasal swabs in JAMA Otolaryngology. They examined more than 600,000 tests over a seven-month period and discovered only 8 significant complications. Four of them were serious nosebleeds, some of which were life-threatening and required emergency interventions. The other 4 were due to dislodged swab tips, which required extraction by pressing under local anesthesia.
Now that millions of immediate at-home antigen tests are being distributed through the White House and the U. S. Postal Service, the U. S. Postal Service is now being able to use the S&P S. In the U. S. , there will most likely be very few injuries, but the accuracy due to the ability to perform correct control will most likely be sacrificed. While it may not reach the nasopharynx (the back of the nose), there is still a robust reservoir for downloading viral material.
Doctors have taken to social media to give the public a better perception of the anatomy of the nose in relation to Covid-19 testing. Eric Levi, a pediatric otolaryngologist in Melbourne, Australia, shares his own tests with his motto “Go Low and Go Slow. “
While it may not be about expanding self-administered testing to the nasopharynx, especially when it comes to testing children, it also explains how to effectively conduct at-home testing in younger children.
With millions of tests performed at home every day, we don’t need to lose accuracy and at the same time gain comfort and safety.
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