Evaluation of Rapid Syphilis Testing Using the Syphilis Health Check in Florida, 2015–2016
CDC STACKS serves as an archival repository of CDC-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other public health information authored or co-authored by CDC or funded partners. As a repository, CDC STACKS retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.
i

Evaluation of Rapid Syphilis Testing Using the Syphilis Health Check in Florida, 2015–2016

Filetype[PDF-518.53 KB]


English

Details:

  • Alternative Title:
    Fla Public Health Rev
  • Personal Author:
  • Description:
    The Syphilis Health Check (SHC) had low estimated specificity (91.5%) in one Florida county. We investigated use of SHC by a range of Florida publicly-funded programs between 2015 and 2016 to estimate specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), field staff acceptance, and impacts on programmatic outcomes. All reported SHC results were extracted from routinely collected program data. Field staff were surveyed about SHC's utility. Analyses investigated differences between SHC and traditional syphilis testing outcomes. Of 3,630 SHC results reported, 442 were reactive; 92 (20.8%) had prior diagnoses of syphilis; 7 (1.6%) had no further testing. Of the remaining 343; 158 (46.0%) were confirmed cases, 168 (49.0%) were considered false-positive, and 17 (5.0%) were not cases but not clearly false-positive. Estimated specificity of SHC was 95.0%. Overall, 48.5% of positives became confirmed cases (PPV). PPV varied according to prevalence of syphilis in populations tested. Staff (90%) thought SHC helped identify new cases but expressed concern regarding discordance between reactive SHC and lab-based testing. Programmatic outcomes assessment showed shorter time to treatment and increased numbers of partners tested for the SHC group; these enhanced outcomes may better mitigate the spread of syphilis compared to traditional syphilis testing alone, but more research is needed.
  • Subjects:
  • Source:
  • Pubmed ID:
    31788675
  • Pubmed Central ID:
    PMC6884084
  • Document Type:
  • Funding:
  • Volume:
    16
  • Collection(s):
  • Main Document Checksum:
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:

You May Also Like

Checkout today's featured content at stacks.cdc.gov