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Bulletin No. 22 - Summer 2005
VirologyClassical Swine Fever
ELBERS AR, VOS JH, BOUMA A, STEGEMAN JA
Ability of veterinary pathologists to diagnose classical swine fever from clinical signs and gross pathological findings.
Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 2004, Volume 66, N°1-4, 239-246
The fact that routine post-mortem examination is often the first element involved in the detection of an epidemic induced the authors to design this experiment. Both the clinical signs and the subsequent results of post-mortem examination recorded during the outbreak of classical swine fever (CSF) in the Netherlands in 1997-1998 were submitted as anonymous cases to five veterinary pathologists who were asked to express a judgement (CSF-suspect or non-suspect). Subsequently and for the same data, pathologists were asked to express their judgement knowing the infection status of the country (free of CSF or CSF outbreak detected 2 weeks before). The sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Sp) of their diagnosis was then evaluated on the base of the results of virus isolation. Compared to a previous experiment in which only the results of post-mortem examination had been presented to the pathologists, the addition of clinical signs increased the sensitivity (less false negative) but decreased the specificity (more false positive). In addition, a clear influence of the infection status of the country on pathologists’ diagnosis was observed as well as a certain lack of agreement between them. Due to the essential role of post-mortem examination in the early detection of classical swine fever, the results of this experiment seem to indicate the need for a major training for the recognition of CSF gross lesions.
