Allergen-specific skin prick tests in allergist practice

Abstract

Identification of patient’s allergen-specific hypersensitivity and its clinical value is a basis of the right choice allergen-specific treatment. The problem is solved by an allergist with the use of different diagnostic methods. The most important stage of diagnostics is an allergen-specific skin testing more widely used as a skin prick testing (SPT). The paper concerns SPT technique, indications and contraindications for the testing, interpretations of SPT results, performance at certain groups of patients, the most probable mistakes in carrying out SPT, the reasons of false positive and false negative results, a comparative assessment of SPT and other methods of allergen-specific diagnostics, requirements to allergenic extracts.