A rapid bedside test can diagnose gastroenteritis in hours instead of days, freeing up hospital beds and improving patient care.

Key facts

• Tests to confirm gastroenteritis often take up to two days, meaning patients take up important side rooms in busy hospital wards.

• A trial at University Hospital Southampton has proven a rapid molecular point-of-care test can deliver results in under two hours, freeing up side rooms and improving patient care.

• The test could save the hospital more than half a million pounds a year.

• If the test is rolled out across the NHS, it could save around 40,000 isolation rooms per year.

The challenge

Gastroenteritis – or more commonly known as D&V (diarrhoea and vomiting) – is an infection of your stomach or bowels.

It leads to over one million visits to emergency departments and at least 130,000 hospital admissions in England every year.

Patients are cared for in isolation rooms, known as side rooms, while they await test results. This helps stop the spread of infection.

However, there are a limited number of side rooms on each ward and there are more patients requiring these facilities than are available.

Laboratory tests confirm the infection, but usually take up to two days to return results, meaning many uninfected patients occupy side rooms when they don’t need to.

Professor Tristan Clark designed and led the GastroPOC trial to evaluate whether a rapid molecular test, that can be done at the patient’s bedside, could give results faster.

The pioneering study found that tens of thousands of patient beds could be saved by the NHS every year by using a new rapid test.

The trial

The study recruited 278 patients at University Hospital Southampton’s emergency department. They were randomly assigned to either receive the rapid test or standard laboratory testing.

The rapid test can detect a wide range of pathogens in a single test and was performed on a stool sample or a rectal swab.

The molecular point-of-care test (mPOCT) delivered much faster results, with an average time to results of 1.7 hours. The standard test took on average 44.7 hours.

These faster results directly led to a reduction in side room use – by a third. 

The study also found that the giving of inappropriate antibiotics was reduced by almost four days with the new test.

The study concluded that if this test was rolled out across the UK it could free up around 40,000 isolation rooms per year.

Improving patient care

The positive results have changed patient care across Southampton General Hospital.

It is now routinely used for all patients arriving at the emergency department’s medical admissions unit with suspected gastroenteritis.

Around 20 patients are being tested per day, with more than 15,000 patients having been tested in total.

Patients are getting faster treatment, patient flow through the hospital is better and infection control has improved.

Side rooms are now being used more efficiently – the average time patients spend there is five hours instead of 39 hours when laboratory tests are used. This means 3,000 side room days a year are saved.

The service is also being used for anyone in a hospital bay – an area with four to six beds – with new, unexplained diarrhoea.

The test could save the hospital £550,000 a year.