Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Quest Diagnostics, Secaucus, New Jersey, USA.
Popul Health Manag. 2021 Feb;24(S1):S26-S34. doi: 10.1089/pop.2020.0296.
Laboratory testing is an important component in the diagnosis of respiratory tract infections such as with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, specimen collection not only risks exposure of health care workers and other patients to infection, but also necessitates use of personal protective equipment that may be in short supply during periods of heightened disease activity. Self-collection of nasal or oropharyngeal swabs offers an alternative to address these drawbacks. Although studies in the past decade have demonstrated the utility of this approach for respiratory infections, it has not been widely adopted in routine clinical practice. The rapid spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2, has focused attention on the need for safe, convenient, timely, and scalable methods for collecting upper respiratory specimens for testing. The goals of this article are to highlight the literature regarding self-collected nasal or oropharyngeal specimens for respiratory pathogen testing; discuss the role of self-collection in helping prevent the spread of the COVID-19 disease from infected patients and facilitating a shift toward "virtual" medicine or telemedicine; and describe the current and future state of self-collection for infectious agents, and the impacts these approaches can have on population health management and disease diagnosis and prevention.
实验室检测是呼吸道感染（如严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒 2（SARS-CoV-2））诊断的重要组成部分。然而，标本采集不仅使医护人员和其他患者有感染的风险，而且还需要使用个人防护设备，而在疾病活动高峰期，这种设备可能会短缺。自我采集鼻咽拭子或口咽拭子提供了一种替代方法，可以解决这些缺点。尽管过去十年的研究表明，这种方法对呼吸道感染很有效，但在常规临床实践中尚未广泛采用。由 SARS-CoV-2 引起的 2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）的迅速传播引起了人们对安全、方便、及时和可扩展的方法的需求，以便为检测采集上呼吸道标本。本文的目的是强调有关自我采集的鼻或口咽标本进行呼吸道病原体检测的文献；讨论自我采集在帮助预防感染患者传播 COVID-19 疾病以及促进向“虚拟”医学或远程医疗转变方面的作用；并描述自我采集传染病原体的现状和未来，以及这些方法对人群健康管理和疾病诊断与预防的影响。
