A comparison of the multi-test with the prick test and multi-test 2.
Allergy skin testing of infants and small children continues to be time-consuming and nerve-wracking. We hoped to have found the solution to these problems by using the multi-test (MT). The latter consists of an applicator with 8 heads, each head consisting of nine plastic needles on which the allergen solution rests. Thus eight allergens can be tested simultaneously. During routine control skin testing we compared MT with our usual method, the prick test (PT), amongst twenty patients. Twenty-seven per cent of the skin reactions differed by more than 1+. When we compared PT results with the previous PT, the correlation of 16% was better despite several years interval between tests, different persons carrying out the tests, and hyposensitization of patients. We adapted the MT system and produced a model, multi-test 2 (MT-2), which consists of eight sterile disposable needles on a stainless steel base. When we compared the MT-2 with PT, only 6% differed by more than 1+. Thus the MT-2 proves to be a useful alternative to the PT for those children, in whom the PT is too difficult to carry out.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D006967:Hypersensitivity / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012882:Skin Tests / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*