In April 2023, the Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health issued a communication recommending submitters to collect swabs for N. gonorrhoeae (GC) culture when also collecting specimens for NAAT testing. This recommendation applies to all patients with suspected gonorrhea infection and from all potentially exposed sites. The goal of GC culture is to permit antimicrobial susceptibility testing for the purpose of multidrug- resistant strain surveillance, which cannot be conducted using current NAAT methods, while the sensitivity of NAAT maximizes the likelihood for detecting GC. The below communication outlines the process that Dynacare will follow for requests for culture and NAAT co-testing from the same patient, as well as supporting evidence.
Read More: Testing Update: Nucleic Acid Amplification Test (NAAT) and Culture Co- testing Requests for Neisseria gonorrhoeae - (ON Only)