The Leptospirosis Information Center

Immediate patient assessment - professional guide

When a patient presents with suspected acute leptospirosis, diagnosis and initial intervention can be a relatively unknown situation for most doctors in the non-endemic regions of the world, and so mistakes are common. In assessing a patient the most important factor to apply is their recollection of the risk event, as this is often the only clue to the potential cause.

In most cases of human infection, diagnosis based on clinical symptoms is very difficult and certainly the only guaranteed diagnoses can be those based on serology from tests such as MAT, ELISA and PCR. In many cases physicians will discover leptospirosis as something of a surprise, after ordering a wide battery of tests on a case with nonspecific presentation - however if the patient's history is examined in detail it is often possible to draw presumptive conclusions based on a risk model. Once a patient has registered positive on the risk model they should be provided with antibiotics and blood samples sent for leptospiral assay, plus tests for any other pathogens that may be high-profile contenders for the pathology presented - often the patient will have more than one simultaneous infection if exposed via contaminated water.

See also

The history of leptospirosis and Weil's diease
Pathology of acute human leptospirosis - professional guide
Treatment of acute human leptospirosis - professional guide
Serological testing for human leptospirosis - professional guide
Pregnancy and pediatrics in human leptospirosis - professional guide
Differential diagnoses for human leptospirosis - professional guide
Images of human clinical signs