Diagnosis of IgE-mediated allergy in the upper respiratory tract.
A statistical analysis was made of data concerning diagnosis of IgE-mediated allergy in the upper respiratory tract in 292 patients. A study was made of: skin test, total and specific IgE (RAST), X-sinus, red blood investigation, and cytology of nasal smear. It appears that screening for the presence of an IgE-mediated allergy in the upper respiratory tract can be performed efficiently with a limited number of skin tests (rye grass, timothy, birch, house dust mite and cat). In this study a greater number of skin tests (15 instead of 5) yielded little additional information (in 2% of the patients). A rather poor correlation between skin test and RAST was found.