PAMF Allergy Evaluation and Diagnostic Services

If you need relief from allergy symptoms—sneezing, wheezing, itching—allergy doctors at Palo Alto Medical Foundation can help. By pinpointing your unique triggers, we can determine the treatment method best for you.

Featured Services

Food and Medication Challenge Testing

Diagnosing Your Allergies

The path toward easing your allergy symptoms begins with comprehensive diagnostic and evaluation services that pinpoint the cause of your reactions and determine the best course of treatment. Board-certified allergy/immunology specialists at Palo Alto Medical Foundation employ a wide range of tests to determine the source and severity of your allergies.

Breathing Tests

Breathing tests like spirometry measure how quickly you exhale air. These tests help a doctor identify whether your allergies are interfering with your breathing and causing asthma or other lung diseases.

Food and Medication Challenge Testing

Food challenges help determine if a person has outgrown a food allergy. Ingestion challenges more commonly check for improved tolerance of a previously allergy-inducing food, such as peanuts. Both graded challenges and ingestion challenge testing involve introducing a potential allergen, gradually and under supervision by a doctor, to test for allergic reaction. Medication challenges are also used as a method to rule out a drug as a cause of symptoms.

Prick Testing

With skin prick testing, drops of suspected allergens are placed onto and scratched into the skin. The allergist then monitors any reaction that can be used to determine allergic sensitivity.

After testing, the allergist will review your results using your medical and exposure history to confirm or rule out a suspected allergic trigger.

Health and Wellness

Managing Your Allergies

Beat Seasonal Allergies

Knowing seasonal allergy patterns in your area can help you ward off the worst symptoms. Learn how.

Breathe Easier

A doctor’s advice on how to manage your exposure to allergens and treat symptoms as they arise.

Kids' Seasonal Allergies

Does your child suffer from seasonal allergies? Learn simple ways to keep allergy attacks at bay.

Environmental Exposure Research

Exposure research looks for ways to improve methods, measurements and models to assess and predict exposures of humans and ecosystems to harmful environmental stressors. Environmental stressors can include chemical pollutants, microbes and pathogens, physical agents such as land use, and processes such as alteration of wildlife habitat. Exposure research also provides the foundation for the development of approaches to reduce these exposures and safeguard humans and the environment.

Sutter Health Environmental Exposure Research Sutter Health Environmental Exposure Research