Direct skin tests in the prevention of allergic reactions in surgical patients (500 cases)
Nava, C.; Briatico-Vangosa, G.; Marchisio, M.
Bollettino dell'Istituto Sieroterapico Milanese 58(1): 81-99
1979
ISSN/ISBN: 0021-2547 PMID: 552839 Document Number: 145131
The methodology used to diagnose drug allergy in 500 surgical patients is described. After an introduction in which the choice of this method is justified, the used methods are shown in detail with the tested active pharmacological principles (it is a group of drugs for pre, intra and post-surgery use). The tested patients have been clinically watched during all their stay in hospital. The results achieved are shown, as well as the good mutual relation between anamnesis and clinical progress with the answers obtained from the tests. The detailed analysis of skin-reactions showed that positive answers against penicillin (in more than 37% of the tested cases) clearly prevailed over other drugs (petidinum about 12%; propanididum about 10%) etc. Skin-test positivity against prometazinum (6%) is stressed as being quite considerable, considering its prevalent anthistaminic pharmacological effect. The work ends showing how this method, if correctly used, can give good results which can be compared with the results achieved by other more sophisticated methodologies. The kind of test is recommended to be adopted by other hospitals to reduce the incidence of immunological pathogenesis diseases which is more and more frequent.