Abstract

Background: Diagnostic procedures for acute tonsillitis etiology consist of clinical evaluation, rapid diagnostic tests, and bacterial culture, blood tests do not have differential diagnostic value. It is important to determine that whether acute tonsillitis is due to a viral etiology such as rhinovirus, coronavirus, parainfluenza viruses, and herpesvirus or a bacterial factor such as A group beta-hemolytic streptococcus (GABHS) by real-time and non-invasive methods. Objectives: Our aim was to differentiate viral or bacterial acute tonsillitis from healthy controls with the elastic scattering spectroscopy.
Materials and Methods: Spectral data were obtained from a total of five positive culture and rapid antigen test (RAT) bacterial etiology GABHS, 12 negative culture and RAT (viral etiology), and 20 non-tonsillitis people as the healthy control group. All data were obtained in the visible wavelength range. Measurements were compared with the culture and RAT results. Multivariate statistical analyses were performed through principal components analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and performance was computed with the receiver operating characteristic curve.
Results: The differentiation based on the discriminant score provided a sensitivity of 80% and specificity of 91.7% in differentiating negative culture and RAT from positive with an accuracy of 88.2%, sensitivity of 16.7%, and specificity of 90% in discriminating negative culture and positive RAT from non-tonsillitis with an accuracy of 62.5% and sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 85% in discriminating positive RAT from non-tonsillitis with an accuracy of 88%. Conclusion: We showed that scattering spectroscopy could discriminate tonsillitis with GABHS, viral tonsillitis, and healthy tonsils with high sensitivity using PCA and LDA. It can be concluded that the optical spectroscopy method has the potential for use in the fast determination of whether the patient’s tonsillitis viral or a bacterial etiology with 80% sensitivity during the examination in real time.