Allergy Blood Tests: There are many types of cheap allergy blood testing methods available but most of them have poor reproducibility. Moreover, these tests normally report the results with fancy colourful charts which appear impressive but provide little information to the professionals. These tests often give false positive or false negative results that may cause more harm than good. In general, hospitals worldwide do not use these types of allergy testing methods but use the cap RAST technique as the only method of choice.

The Cap RAST method uses a state-of-the-art technique that is accepted world wide as the in-vitro Gold Standard. Moreover, the IgE level estimated by the equipment is standardized against the World Health Organization immunology standards for IgE maintained by them. The cap RAST reports the results in both quantitative and qualitative terms for professional assessment. Therefore, the allergy blood test using the cap RAST is the method of choice because it is sensitive, accurate, safer, convenient and unaffected by medication taken by the patient. The allergy blood test can be performed in babies and elderly and in persons with severe eczema in whom it is difficult to do the skin test.

The choice of the allergens selected for test depends on the clinical history. Usually the doctor may select about 12 to 15 allergens based on his experience but in some cases he may select less allergen for testing. Skill and experience is required to interpret the result and in most cases the test results often fit the clinical observation and confirm the diagnosis. Appropriate avoidance measures should be immediately implemented. The benefits of the avoidance measures usually become apparent within the first few days.