Patient Care pathway
In vitro diagnostics provide crucial information at every step of the care journey.
Prevention
Detecting diseases before symptoms occur
If there is an increased risk of certain conditions due to genetic factors, family history or lifestyle, laboratory tests can help to detect potential risk factors at an early stage. Disease can be prevented or delayed by timely adjustment of lifestyle and eating habits or by preventive medication.
Screening
Population studies
Healthy people, without complaints or symptoms, can be tested preventively for (the chance of) developing certain diseases. For example, newborns are examined for hereditary disorders with the help of the heel prick screening, and the colon cancer screening is used to detect a (starting) tumor in the intestine at an early stage in all healthy people in the age category 55-75 years.
Diagnosis
Excluding or confirming a disease
Good care starts with making a good diagnosis. What disease does someone have or not have? Only a correct diagnosis can lead to the right treatment choices. In the case of acute heart complaints, for example, laboratory tests (troponin determination) can be used to check whether it is a heart attack or not. This allows for quick and adequate treatment.
Prognosis
Insight into expectations
Laboratory tests in combination with scientific knowledge about (the development of) diseases provides insight into the probable course and outcome of the disease. The expectation pattern is based on the observed course of the disease in the largest possible group of patients with the same disease at the same stage.
Personalisation
Customised therapy
Thanks to the development of increasingly better laboratory diagnostics and new DNA techniques, personal and genetic factors can be mapped. This makes it possible to predict the effect of a therapy in an individual patient. The use of molecular diagnostics leads to personalised medication and therapy: the right treatment, for the right patient, at the right time.
Therapy
Laboratory research is not therapy, but it does play an important role in therapy choices. Sixty to seventy percent of medical decisions, such as the choice of therapy, are based on the results of laboratory tests using in vitro diagnostics. Specific tests in blood, urine or other bodily fluids can then be used to determine whether the chosen therapy is effective or needs to be adjusted.
Monitoring
Monitoring and adjusting treatment
Laboratory diagnostics can be used to monitor the course of the disease and the effect of the therapy. Through this monitoring, treatments and/or medication can be adjusted (in time) or stopped as soon as the laboratory values are 'normal'. This prevents overtreatment.
