SynthesisAnnals of family medicine
A systematic review of clinical decision rules for the diagnosis of influenza.
Synthesis in Annals of family medicine. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04245800 (Behavioral Patterns and Patient Self-completed Diagnostic Testing Study of Respiratory Viral Infection "Home Testing of Respiratory Illness"), which is not on this map. Cited by 29 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Behavioral Patterns and Patient Self-completed Diagnostic Testing Study of Respiratory Viral Infection "Home Testing of Respiratory Illness"
Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Diagnostic models predicting paediatric viral acute respiratory infections: a systematic review.BMJ open · 2023Pooled it
- Contribution of influenza viruses to medically attended acute respiratory illnesses in children in high-income countries: a meta-analysis.Influenza and other respiratory viruses · 2016Pooled it
- Clinical presentation and microbiological diagnosis in paediatric respiratory tract infection: a systematic review.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2015Pooled it
- Association of interleukin-8 and neutrophils with nasal symptom severity during acute respiratory infection.Journal of medical virology · 2015Trial
- Meditation or exercise for preventing acute respiratory infection: a randomized controlled trial.Annals of family medicineTrial
- Development and external validation of a risk prediction score (DASHI) for cardiovascular events following acute respiratory infections: derivation and validation retrospective cohort study.EClinicalMedicine · 2025Article
- AI-assisted diagnostic approach for the influenza-like illness in children: decision support system for patients and clinicians.Biomedical engineering letters · 2025Article
- Community-acquired necrotizing pneumonia caused by methicillin-resistantRespirology case reports · 2024Article
- Article
- Diagnosing COVID-19 in the Emergency Department: A Scoping Review of Clinical Examinations, Laboratory Tests, Imaging Accuracy, and Biases.Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine · 2020Article
- Influenza and Viral Pneumonia.Clinics in chest medicine · 2018Review
- Article
- Simulation of four respiratory viruses and inference of epidemiological parameters.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2018Article
- Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis to predict influenza in primary care patients.BMC infectious diseases · 2016Article
- Article
- Should clinical case definitions of influenza in hospitalized older adults include fever?Influenza and other respiratory viruses · 2015Article
- Other respiratory viruses are important contributors to adult respiratory hospitalizations and mortality even during peak weeks of the influenza season.Open forum infectious diseases · 2014Article
- Effectiveness of 2012-2013 influenza vaccine against influenza-like illness in general population: estimation in a French web-based cohort.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2014Article
- Validity of clinical case definitions for influenza surveillance among hospitalized patients: results from a rural community in North India.Influenza and other respiratory viruses · 2013Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
purposeIn this study, we assessed whether multivariate models and clinical decision rules can be used to reliably diagnose influenza.
methodsWe conducted a systematic review of MEDLINE, bibliographies of relevant studies, and previous meta-analyses. We searched the literature (1962-2010) for articles evaluating the accuracy of multivariate models, clinical decision rules, or simple heuristics for the diagnosis of influenza. Each author independently reviewed and abstracted data from each article; discrepancies were resolved by consensus discussion. Where possible, we calculated sensitivity, specificity, predictive value, likelihood ratios, and areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve.
resultsA total of 12 studies met our inclusion criteria. No study prospectively validated a multivariate model or clinical decision rule, and no study performed a split-sample or bootstrap validation of such a model. Simple heuristics such as the so-called fever and cough rule and the fever, cough, and acute onset rule were each evaluated by several studies in populations of adults and children. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves were 0.70 and 0.79, respectively. We could not calculate a single summary estimate, however, as the diagnostic threshold varied among studies.
conclusionsThe fever and cough, and the fever, cough, and acute onset heuristics have modest accuracy, but summary estimates could not be calculated. Further research is needed to develop and prospectively validate clinical decision rules to identify patients requiring testing, empiric treatment, or neither.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.