Patient-delivered therapy

Patient-delivered (partner) therapy (PDT or PDPT), also called expedited partner therapy (EPT)^[1], is the clinical practice of treating the sex partners of patients diagnosed with chlamydia or gonorrhea by providing prescriptions or medications to the patient to take to his/her partner without the health care provider first examining the partner.^[2]

EPT may also include other forms of implementation than PDPT.^[2]

Efficacy

PDPT works as an addition to the usual patient referral, the latter being that the index patient has a responsibility for informing sex partners of their exposure to a sexually transmitted infection.^[3] PDPT significantly reduces the risk of persistent or recurrent infection compared with patient referral alone; a review found that addition of PDPT gives a relative risk of 0.73, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.57 to 0.93.^[3]

Pitfalls include that EPT may compromise the quality of care provided to partners, especially when used as a first-line approach for partners who would otherwise seek clinical services. For instance, the medication could cause serious adverse reactions, including allergy, which could have been foreseen by a visit to a health care provider.^[4]

See also

• Sexually transmitted disease

References