Interesting discussion with CRITICALCAREDOC#1 about tests and treatments.
With treatments, the criteria medical folks use is how many do I have to treat to save one life? With tests, the criteria is “is it dispositive”. In testing large numbers, how sensitive is the test, what is the error rate, and the impact.
He used his experience in the late 80’s discussion of HIV testing. The estimate was that 1 out of 10,000 people have the condition. If I have a test for HIV that’s 99% accurate. It will positively id 99 out of 100 who have the condition. If I have a population of 1,000,000 people, that means in that million, there are 1,000 people with the condition. SO I run my test and I find 990 people who have it and miss 10. BUT, I also have told 9,900 people that they have it, but they really don’t.
So in testing, it’s important to know what the statistics of the test are. Every test has false negative and false positives. Just because you’re dealing with a population of one, the stats still apply.
In the test that we inquired about, that KIDNEYDOC#4 added, it has very high sensitivity but may NOT be dispositive. Whatever it tells you, you must consider that it maybe wrong. And, you may not have caught it when it is malfunctioning. And, you may or may not be able to treat it.
So, what I got out of it is that this test is marked as status “KFH”!
(Keep Family Happy)
Argh!
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In fat old white guy injineer’s school, we applied that to measurements. Funny to hear it applied to real people.
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Posted by reinkefj 
Reinke Faces Life 