Rapid diagnosis of infection in the immunocompromised patient

The development of rapid, sensitive and specific tests for diagnosis of infection in the immunocompromised patient remains a priority, Although some progress has been made with the enhancement of conventional culture-based tests, the most promising recent advances have been in the development oi methods which use immunodiagnosis or DNA amplification technology, Encouraging results have been obtained with these methods in fungal infections where diagnosis is recognized to be especially difficult.