While they've told that patient that they need a doctor's order, in practice they don't check if the sender is a doctor, nor is it a written requirement on the request form.
Hello everybody who has sent in samples for the enterovirus neutralization test in Frankfurt:
There are two fields for names in the German request form:
-- the name of the doctor ("Einsender-Adresse")
-- the name of the patient ("Patient-Identifikation").
Did you write both times your own name? or did you leave one empty? or did you invent a doctor's name or a patient's name and wrote your own into the other field?
thanks a lot for experiences!
@Canned @green_echo @Markus83
and does anyone have experiences with antivirus neutralization testing at the Czech national lab (
https://szu.cz/en/expert-centres-and-departments/centre-for-epidemiology-and-microbiology/) as per Hip's roadmap? (
https://mecfsroadmap.altervista.org/)
MY EXPERIENCES SO FAR WITH THE CZECH LAB FOR ENTEROVIRUS NEUTRALIZATION TESTING:
I exchanged emails with them and from how they answer the questions, they have one person who speaks English but they are not very professional. And really reluctant to give any information at all. That well-known feeling I had in another East European country when interacting with underpaid state employed doctors: demotivation everywhere. (The first answer was essentially just send in the serum to our address and it will be fine
. But then, when I have asked more, it turned out that they actually do have further information, for example that I need to specify the laboratory so the sample arrives at the right place within the big institution. And they seriously told me that I have to send samples frozen. Yes, I do know how to get that done and I have already done it ... but if the Frankfurt lab doesn't require frozen samples then I doubt it is needed in order to measure the exact same thing in Prague... But in the end, it's not the quality of the emails but the lab quality that counts. And that I cannot judge. And if sending frozen samples on dry ice helps with accuracy then I am happy to do it: I find very high accuracy utmost important because I wish to retest after interventions, and small improvements should become visible. On the positive side, the Czechs confirmed the price of 130$ for the entire panel. Even if I add a 100 bucks or so for the courier to be there next day (ordinary post to Prague is really too slow within Europe) it is very tempting compared to the price of 410€ for the entire panel in Frankfurt (the panel contents are not much different. among the viruses that Dr Chia finds in his CFS patients, both have all except that Frankfurt has the EV9 which Prague does not have. Now, back to the email exchange, most frighteningly, my email exchange was not with some secretary (which I would tolerate if she was clueless), but with a lab doctor (Dr R...ová). What I also strongly disliked, that in several occasions, she avoided answering questions. for example, I asked if sending samples frozen is really needed, and I stressed that it would be for me very important to know how others within the Czech Republic send in samples and she didn't answer, just said that well then send non frozen... I mean hello, in a professional lab they simply would do a test to find out what is really needed: let the sample sit in a shelf for some days and repeat the measurements and see if the test still measures the same as initially or not. Such tests need to be done, it's not a matter of negotiation with the client and it's not okay to simply always demand the maximum, to send in everything frozen on dry ice....
-> While I'm very still interested in other's experiences, I ditched the Czech lab for this round of testing and will pay the much higher price in Frankfurt.
