Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Address correspondence to Lynne S. Garcia, lynnegarcia2 verizon. Practical Guidance for Clinical Microbiology Laboratories: Laboratory diagnosis of parasites from the gastrointestinal tract. Clin Microbiol Rev e All Rights Reserved. This Practical Guidance for Clinical Microbiology document on the laboratory diagnosis of parasites from the gastrointestinal tract provides practical information for the recovery and identification of relevant human parasites.
The document is based on a comprehensive literature review and expert consensus on relevant diagnostic methods. However, it does not include didactic information on human parasite life cycles, organism morphology, clinical disease, pathogenesis, treatment, or epidemiology and prevention. As greater emphasis is placed on neglected tropical diseases, it becomes highly probable that patients with gastrointestinal parasitic infections will become more widely recognized in areas where parasites are endemic and not endemic.
Generally, these methods are nonautomated and require extensive bench experience for accurate performance and interpretation. This Practical Guidance for Clinical Microbiology document is intended to provide readers with practical information relevant to general hospital clinical microbiology laboratories for the recovery and identification of parasites from the gastrointestinal tract.
Although the document is not designed for reference or research laboratories, it is important for general clinical laboratories to be aware of all relevant procedures, even those for which specimens are submitted to a reference laboratory. The document is the result of a comprehensive literature review and expert consensus relevant to the topics under discussion; it also supports the education and training of microbiologists in clinical laboratories.
However, it is not intended to provide didactic training related to human parasite life cycles, organism morphology, clinical disease, pathogenesis, treatment, or epidemiology and prevention. Most procedures performed in diagnostic parasitology require a great deal of judgment and interpretation and are classified by the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1 as high-complexity procedures. The majority of these procedures are not automated and require considerable practice to produce accurate, clinically relevant results.
