title: A study on the comparison between clinical and microbiological diagnoses of sexually transmitted diseases.
abstract: The efficacy of microbiological diagnosis in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) has been evaluated in comparison with the clinical diagnosis. Amongst the clinical diagnoses of single STDs, syphilis, genital warts, gonorrhoea and herpes genitalis were the predominant ones. Syphilis was the most predominant infection in both the single and mixed STD infections in Chennai. Clinical diagnoses of trichomoniasis, genital chlamydiasis and genital herpes were more accurate and correlated well with laboratory investigations. On the other hand, clinical diagnoses of gonorrhoea, candidiasis and syphilis were less accurate. More over many of these cases, clinically diagnosed as single, infection, were also positive for other STDs in the laboratory investigations. Double infections were clinically diagnosed only in 7 cases as against 11 cases in microbiological tests and one triple infection diagnosed in microbiological tests was diagnosed only as single disease clinically. Therefore, the laboratory/microbiological investigations have been emphasised to have better accuracy of diagnosis of STDs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology, Dr ALM Postgraduate Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Chennai.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Haripriya
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rajendran
authors.forename: S P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Thyagarajan
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Sripathy
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Parthiban
authors.forename: C C Mohan
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Ram
authors.forename: P B
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Gopalakrishnan
authors.forename: G S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Chandraseskha
authors.forename: Melani
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rajendran
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007194:India / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D008875:Middle Aged; D015995:Prevalence; D012307:Risk Factors; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D017678:Sex Distribution; D012749:Sexually Transmitted Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000382:microbiology*