Laboratory Assessment Flashcards
Lab tests helps us diagnose medical conditions and assess their severity. We also use them to screen for risk factors.
In a soap note, a ____________ panel we use that to screen for heart disease
cholesterol
Lab tests are important because we can monitor a patient’s progress while they are on their medication
____________ is the ability for a test to correctly identify a patient with the disease that your testing for
Sensitivity
__________is the true negative rate meaning it’s the tests ability to correct detect pts WITHOUT the disease
Specificity
If someone who is actually pregnant takes a pregnancy test and the result comes out positive then you will know that test is high in sensitivity whereas if a patient is not pregnant takes a pregnancy test and it comes out negative we will know that that’s high in specificity
We want laboratory tests to be both high in sensitivity and specificity because it prevents the chance of getting a false negative or a false positive. What would happen if a pt got a false negative so the pt might think they are not pregnant and actually they really are…and this can be dangerous because if they go out drinking on a weekend that could be potentially very harmful to the fetus
If it was false positive on the test then the pt is going to think they are pregnant when they are not so that’s a lot of unnecessary stress
Urine antigen test is mostly used in hospital settings for people with community acquired pneumonia. It tests for the antigen in the pneumococcal and Legionella family…high in specificity for both antigens in the powerpoint slide…so if we were to get a negative result we would feel confident that it was truly negative right…if we got a positive we would feel less confident because sensitivity rate is variable so we wouldn’t feel as confident that it would be a true positive in comparison to a true negative because the sensitivity isn’t as strong as the specificity
A newborn is mostly made of water and what is going to be normal for them in a reference range is different than in an adult
A pt with diabetes that checks their blood glucose levels that’s going to be drastically different if they take their blood glucose after they inject their insulin versus if they don’t take their insulin
If a pt with diabetes checks their blood glucose two hours after a meal that’s going to be significantly different to if they checked their blood glucose in the morning
Have to test levels of vancomycin in the body at a very specific time or else the test is essentially for nothing….if you don’t check levels at the right time then test is not good…then
To remember stick diagrams, pretend your at a café and you order salty buns with a banana…with coffee and cream and sugar
Sodium (Na): most prevalent cation meaning positive charge in our ___________ fluid and its important for regulating our fluid and acid base balance as well as maintaining the electric potential necessary for nerve impulse transmission.
extracellular
