The usefulness of nasal cytology test in the diagnosis of allergic rhinitis in children

Abstract

Some children, who are diagnosed as allergic rhinitis without any laboratory test to confirm, are often treated with inappropriate medications. Nasal cytology test, which is inexpensive and easy to perform, may help general pediatricians to confirm their diagnosis of allergic rhinitis. The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy, predictive values and likelihood ratio of nasal cytology test in the diagnosis of allergic rhinitis. Eighty three boys and forty one girls, who has nasal symptoms for 2 or more weeks, were recruited to perform skin prick tests with common inhalant allergens and nasal cytology tests. Their ages ranged from 29 months to 135 months and a median of 75 months. of the 124 subjects, 70 were diagnosed as allergic rhinitis, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive and negative predictive values of nasal cytology test (combined positive eosinophil or basophil) were 80%, 90.74%, 91.80% and 77.78% respectively. The conclusion is that nasal cytology test had good accuracy and is useful to confirm the diagnosis of allergic rhinitis.