EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE RAPID TEST AND CENTOR SCALE FOR DETERMINING THE CAUSE OF ACUTE TONSILLITIS

Inflammation of the tonsils is one of the most common diseases of the upper respiratory tract and requires timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment.Acute tonsillitis is an inflammatory process in the tonsils that can be caused by both viral and bacterial pathogens.Examination of the patient by a doctor is the best method of diagnosis, but this method rarely provides sufficient evidence to determine the aetiology of the pathogen.The Centor clinical scoring system and its modification, Centor/McIsaac, are also used to determine the likelihood of streptococcal infection in patients.Rapid antigen tests are a diagnostic tool that allows testing at the point of care.The aim of our study is to determine the bacterial etiology of tonsillitis using criteria of the patient's clinical condition and the results of the antigen-express test for group A streptococcus.To investigate the bacterial aetiology of tonsillitis, namely the detection of Group A Streptococcus.A rapid lateral flow immunochromatographic test was used to detect the carbohydrate antigen of Group A Streptococcus in a throat swab.In order to differentiate the bacteriological or viral etiology of the infection according to the anamnestic and clinical symptoms in the value of the sum of points, doctors used the Centor scale, for patients >15 years.The results of these tests showed that a rapid diagnostic test using the Centor criterion 3 has a high sensitivity and a good negative predictive value, making it useful for detecting upper respiratory tract infections and ruling them out in their absence.