Sensitivities and Specificities of Diagnostic Tests

摘要: To the Editor.— The article by Harris on "The Hazards of Bedside Bayes" (1981;236:2602) presents an important caution. However, it misrepresents inherent variability in data diagnostic tests that can be collected well-designed studies, and may exaggerate effective now literature. fails to make clear sensitivity specificity values associated with a test are subject variation two independent dimensions: (1) test's capacity discriminate given disease from nondisease, (2) decision criterion (confidence level or cutting score) is adopted for declaring result positive. Thus, constant discrimination have measured vary 0.0 1.0, 1.0 0.0, as varies conservative liberal. This relationship reflected so-called