JTCS Click here to go to SJM website.
HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


     

This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Personal Folders
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Permission Requests
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Obuchowski, N. A.
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Obuchowski, N. A.
Related Collections
Right arrow Education
Right arrow Professional affairs
Right arrowRelated Articles

J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2009;137:1572-1573
© 2009 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Letter to the Editor

Reference values: No need for confusion

Nancy A. Obuchowski, PhD

Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

To the Editor:

I would like to comment on the discussion among Lim and Dusmet,1Go Marra and colleagues,2Go and Rice and Blackstone.3Go There are several issues of confusion; I hope I can clarify some of these.

Sensitivity and specificity are measures of a test's inherent diagnostic performance. Sensitivity is the proportion of patients who test positive among patients with the disease; specificity is the proportion of patients who test negative among patients without the disease. Another common measure of diagnostic performance is the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.4Go An ROC curve illustrates a test's sensitivity and specificity for different criteria for defining positive and negative test results. For highly accurate tests, there is a point on the ROC curve that one can choose if high specificity is desired; the price, however, is low sensitivity. Similarly, one can choose very high sensitivity but at a price of low specificity. Lim and Dusmet's1Go comment that "sensitivity truly starts at 50%" is incorrect; a test with low sensitivity (ie, <0.5) can have diagnostic value if the specificity is high.

Sensitivity and specificity are the basic measures of a test's ability, but they do not describe how well . . . [Full Text of this Article]


Related Articles

Remediastinoscopy: A statistical reinterpretation
Eric Lim and Michael Dusmet
J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg. 2009 137: 254-255. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Referent values and equipoise: Editors' notes
Thomas W. Rice and Eugene H. Blackstone
J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg. 2009 137: 256-257. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Remediastinoscopy in restaging of lung cancer after induction therapy
Alessandro Marra, Ludger Hillejan, Sylvia Fechner, and Georgios Stamatis
J. Thorac. Cardiovasc. Surg. 2008 135: 843-849. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]





HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
ANN THORAC SURG ASIAN CARDIOVASC THORAC ANN EUR J CARDIOTHORAC SURG
J THORAC CARDIOVASC SURG ICVTS ALL CTSNet JOURNALS
Copyright © 2009 by The American Association for Thoracic Surgery.