Significance of virological diagnostics for the effective treatment of hospitalized patients infected with influenza virus

In the case of influenza disease there is no possible to make unquestionable diagnosis only on the basis of clinical picture. Therefore, virological laboratory diagnostics is important, especially in hospitalized patients and those who highly risk post-influenza complications and severe course of the disease. Virological diagnostic tests for influenza and positive result obtained in these tests allow to use effective antiviral-antiinfluenza drugs as new generation drugs: oseltamivir and zanamivir and also old generation drugs: amantadine and rimantadine. Since these antivirals are effective only in the case of influenza infection, diagnostic tests should be performed previously. Present methods allow to obtain the result of the test within less than 1 hour to 8 hours. This is of great importance, because the administration of the drug within 36 hours from the onset of symptoms is one of the factors conditioning the effectiveness of antiviral therapy. In the present paper there are described four cases of hospitalized patients in whom the infection with influenza virus was confirmed by immunofluorescence test and RT-PCR, and then the antiviral-antiinfluenza drugs were immediately introduced. This antiviral therapy in a short time resulted in the improvement of patients' condition and allowed to discharge them from the hospital. Antiviral-antiinfluenza drugs together with virological diagnostics are the effective tool in the case of patients not vaccinated against influenza, who were infected with influenza virus and fell ill.