Specific Drug Groups

Use the following links to view information for specific drug categories:

Drug Abuse Survey

• This test is intended to be used by a physician or trained drug abuse counselor and interpreted in the context of the patient's symptoms and clinical and medication history.
• This is a screening immunoassay to identify drugs of abuse by class.
  Note: This test is performed on urine specimens only.
• This test has a high negative predictive value.
• Cross-reactivity: this test has a false-positive rate of approximately 5%.
  Note: The false-positive rate varies by analyte.
• Positive results are not definitive, and should be considered presumptive.
• This test is not intended to be used for employee drug screening.

The advantage of this test is low cost. The cross-reactivity of the antibody used in the assay varies by drug. For example, the test for amphetamines detects amphetamine with greatest sensitivity, but it cross-reacts with over-the-counter (OTC) sympathomimetics, such as pseudophedrine, if they are present in urine at high concentrations.

Confirmed Drug Abuse Survey

• This test is designed for clinical circumstances where the patient may be inclined to deny the test results.
• The test uses the same immunoassay as the Drug Abuse Survey to screen samples but also includes confirmation of screening results by more definitive analytical techniques.
  Note: This test is designed to provide definitive test results.
• All positive screen results are confirmed by gas chromatography with flame ionization detection (GC-FID), gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS), or liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS).
• This test can be ordered in a variety of configurations, differing only by the target drugs.

When results must be definitive, the Confirmed Drug Abuse Survey provides a fast and cost-effective approach to screening for drugs of abuse. It takes advantage of the negative predictive value of the immunoassay screen and couples it with the true-positive capability of the confirmation techniques. When a drug is present, the report identifies the specific drug and concentration.

Specific Drug Group Confirmation

• These tests are designed to evaluate a patient known to use a specific drug.
• Tests are available for each drug of abuse class.
• This test is designed to detect lower concentrations of a drug.
• This test is useful when a drug may have a low cross-reactivity in the screening assay (eg, oxycodone in the urine opiate assay).
  Note: More sensitive and specific than screening tests.
• All drugs tested are named in the report.
• Concentration is reported down to the limit of quantitation (LOQ) of the assay.