Shingles: Diagnosis
Diagnosing shingles before the rash breaks out can be difficult because the pain could be symptomatic of a number of other disorders.

Once the rash appears however, your doctor can easily distinguish shingles from chickenpox and other eruptions. Shingles always forms a band or cluster that appears only on one side of the body. To confirm diagnosis, your doctor may take a swab or scraping of cells from the blisters and send it to a laboratory for testing.