Diagnostics Flashcards
Why do we do tests?
- Confirming the diagnosis
- Shot in the dark- allows the diagnosis to be narrowed down
- Assessing stages of severity
- Medico-legal reasons (paternity test)
What are the downsides of tests?
- Costs
- Inaccuracies
- Invasiveness of some tests and anxiety
Describe a diagnostic pathway
- Demographics
- Symptoms
- Physical examination
Simple bedside tests - Diagnostic test- surrogate biomarker which substitutes for clinical endpoint
- Real disease
- Many diagnoses are made through screening rather than patient presentation
Describe the ideal test
- Identifies every case of disease (100% sensitive)
- Does not predict anyone from the healthy group as sick (100% specific)
- Non-invasive
- Cheap
- Instant
- Easy to interpret data- presence of marker being actual marker
Describe how to develop a test- looking for a biomarker
- Comparing an equal number of healthy/diseased individuals
- If threshold too low, many people could be falsely classified
- Gold standard vs new test
- Validation with gold standard- e.g. confirmation through biopsy
- How often does the test match the biopsy
What is sensitivity?
Proportion of true positives that are correctly identified
What is specificity?
Proportion of true negatives that are correctly identified
What is a type 1 error?
- False positive
What is a type 2 error?
- False negative
What is the equation for sensitivity?
True positive/ (true pos + false neg)
What is the equation for specificity?
True negative/ (true neg + false pos)
What is the positive predictive value?
Proportion of patients with a positive test who are correctly diagnosed
What is the negative predictive value?
Proportion of patients with a negative who are correctly diagnosed
What is the equation for PPV?
True pos/ (true pos + false pos)
What is the equation for NPV?
True neg/ (true neg + false neg)