DTA Flashcards
Why do we use diagnostic tests?
Detect/exclude disease, reassure we are not missing something, medico-legal or financial reasons, follow protocol, easy
How would you evaluate histories/examinations?
Consider them at diagnostic tests (DTA studies)
Why do we evaluate a medical test?
See if it will benefit a patients, cost considerations with similar efficacy, avoid evaluation bypass
Are medical tests or treatments regulated more?
Treatments
Which agency regulates medical tests?
Medical healthcare regulatory agency (MHRA)
What does the MHRA require of tests?
They are safe and measure what they say they do
What can be a big contributing pressure to medical tests and why?
Commercial pressure, as there is no requirement for the manufacturers to prove the benefit or say how it is best used.
What are consequences of inappropriate testing?
Cost, anxiety, discomfort, pain, unnecessary further treatments and adverse effects
What are consequences of false negatives?
Wrongly reassure patient, missed diseases, infectious diseases spread
What makes clinicians use one test over another?
Accuracy, cost, ease of use, quicker to give results, less invasive, safer, test process
What do DTAS compare?
Presence of condition estimated with index test compared to reference standard
Which 3 types of bias are important for internal validity of DTAS?
Spectrum, verification and review
When is a test useful?
Changes our ability to predict if person has a condition or not
In what circumstances does improved test accuracy not lead to improved patient outcome?
Not acted upon appropriately, practitioner error, diagnosis not changed, treatment errors
What aspects of a test are evaluated?
Accuracy, safety, benefit to patient, harm to patient, will a colleague get same result
In what ways can the administration of a test impact the patient outcomes?
Test process, timing test, feasibility of test
In what ways can the production of test results affect the patient?
Diagnostic test accuracy, timing of results, interpretability of results
In what ways can the diagnostic decision based on a test affect the patient?
Timing of diagnosis, diagnostic yield, diagnostic confidence
In what ways can the way the treatment decision is made based on a test affect the patient?
Therapeutic yield and confidence
In what ways can treatment implementation based on a diagnostic test vary and affect the patient?
Adherence and timing of treatment
What 2 things impact patients in outcome of a diagnostic test?
Treatment and test harms and direct effects
What are diagnostic tests used for?
Screening, diagnosis and surveillance
What percentage of diagnostic tests have no diagnostic errors?
1%
What are the 2 components of test accuracy?
Sensitivity and specificity
What is sensitivity?
The proportion of those with the disease that the test detects
What is specificity?
The proportion of those without the disease that have a negative result (e.g. 100% = no false positives)
What are the 4 steps of the basic design to assess test accuracy?
- Collect of patients suspected to have target disorder (similar to those test would be used on in practice)
- Perform index test
- Perform reference standard (assumed to be more accurate)
- Blinded cross-classification to compare results
What are the components of a test accuracy question?
PITR: Participants, index test, target disorder, reference standard