Measures of accuracy and performance of diagnostic tests.
Diagnostic tests are integral to the practice of veterinary cardiology, any other specialty, and general veterinary medicine. Developing and understanding diagnostic tests is one of the cornerstones of clinical research. This manuscript describes the diagnostic test properties including sensitivity, specificity, predictive value, likelihood ratio, receiver operating characteristic curve.


METHODS
Review of practical book chapters and standard statistics manuscripts.


RESULTS
Diagnostics such as sensitivity, specificity, predictive value, likelihood ratio, and receiver operating characteristic curve are described and illustrated.


CONCLUSIONS
Basic understanding of how diagnostic tests are developed and interpreted is essential in reviewing clinical scientific papers and understanding evidence based medicine.
Drobatz
Kenneth J
KJ
Department of Clinical Studies, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 3900 Delancey Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6010, USA. drobatz@vet.upenn.edu
D000820:Animal Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis*; D000818:Animals; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003955:Diagnostic Tests, Routine / Q000592:standards / Q000662:veterinary*; D006331:Heart Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000662:veterinary*; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014730:Veterinary Medicine / Q000592:standards*