10
votes
Accepted
How is pain measured?
Please note that the pain scale is usually used to evaluate the efficacy of treatment. As long as the pain is responding to treatment, there need not be objectivity per se.
Was it a '7' on arrival? ...
- 8,852
8
votes
Accepted
How to detect cancer in general?
Thus far, more than 20 different tumor markers have been characterized and are in clinical use... There is no “universal” tumor marker that can detect any type of cancer.
[L]imitations to the use of ...
- 492
6
votes
Accepted
How do you monitor possible Lyme disease after a treated infection?
Patients successfully treated for Lyme Disease do not need monitoring of any kind (there is no advantage to this.) There are no recommendations for routine antibody levels post Lyme (in fact, it is ...
- 8,852
5
votes
When is an MRI also an MRN?
If you are going to have a Magnetic Resonance Neurography (MRN), also known as MR Imaging of Peripheral Nerves (PNI) (UCSF), a doctor will likely tell you in advance, at least because the ...
- 15.7k
5
votes
Accepted
Munchausen syndrome by proxy, caregiver and care receiver relation
Munchausen by proxy has been diagnosed for caregiver/care receiver relationships that were not parent / child. Munchausen by adult proxy is an article reviewing 13 cases found in the medical ...
- 7,001
5
votes
Accepted
What are the online blood testing services that allow to pick and choose exactly what test you want?
Somehow today I had a bit more luck in addressing my own question. It seems that many of the online blood testing services do offer tests on a disaggregated basis. Their more popular products are ...
- 749
5
votes
How is pain measured?
The Numerical Rating Scale (NRS - 11) may be the easiest one to relate to. Between ranges can be looked at pretty objectively, but within ranges is more subjective.
Rating: Pain Level
0: No Pain
...
- 711
5
votes
How do you tell a brain-dead patient from a living one?
Once the decision to proceed with the brain death determination has been made, three conditions must be present: coma, the absence of brainstem reflexes, and apnea.
Coma should be evaluated by ...
- 6,722
4
votes
Myelocytes present in CBC
Myelocytes are immature granulocytes (a type of white blood cells), that are usually only found in bone marrow.
In essence, raised immature granulocytes are a sign of bone marrow activity.
The ...
- 7,001
4
votes
What are the dangers of screening tests in overdiagnosis and overtreatment?
Is screening a good thing?
-Overall yes, but with caveats.
First, take an extreme example of an individual undergoing a full body CT scan at least once a year, every year after the age of 50. The ...
- 476
4
votes
Accepted
What are the dangers of screening tests in overdiagnosis and overtreatment?
Overdiagnosis is not the same as misdiagnosis (for example, many people are concerned that ADHD is often misdiagnosed, but call it overdiagnosis.*)
Overdiagnosis and overtreatment are intertwined. ...
- 8,852
4
votes
How effective/accurate are pill cameras for diagnosing Crohn's disease?
They're successful about two thirds of the time, which is better than other techniques.
In general, success rates of diagnosis using wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) range from ~61%-71%, but hover ...
- 1,838
3
votes
Accepted
What diseases can be identified by some defined algorithm?
Some diseases have laboratory result-based definitions. For example, diabetes is defined by some organizations as a fasting blood sugar value over a certain level, or other similar laboratory test ...
- 628
3
votes
When is an MRI also an MRN?
Magnetic Resonance Imaging is an umbrella term for any medical imaging technique that makes use of the phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance. There are many variants depending on how the scanner is ...
- 2,341
3
votes
Are there any "markers of low immunity" in people without any genetic immune disease?
Low immunity with frequent infections in adults without any genetic immunodeficiency disease can be due to:
Genetic predisposition (Cureus)
Old age (J Clin Invest)
Excessive stress (Psychol Bull)
...
- 15.7k
3
votes
Accepted
What is Clinical Decision Support (CDS)?
What is Clinical Decision Support?
This ends up getting a little bogged down in compliance mumbo jumbo, but Clinical Decision Support is defined by the US centers for medicare and medicaid services as:...
- 3,178
2
votes
MRI scans for diagnosing Crohn's disease?
As far as I know MRI scans are mainly used to assess the location and extent of crohn's disease manifestations and crohn's associated complications (strictures, fistulas, wall thinkening). MRI is ...
- 21
2
votes
Uremic encephalopathy, diabetes, and halucinations
The treatment for uremic encephalopathy is dialysis of some sort - peritoneal, etc. - or a kidney transplant, of course. But the latter is not the immediate treatment of choice.
Looking for why ...
- 8,852
2
votes
How is the workflow of physical examination's documentation in the USA exactly?
I agree with the other answer and wanted to add a few things.
At most larger healthcare systems in the USA, EHRs are used. Paper is still sometimes used in smaller practices, but rarely.
In the USA ...
- 5,704
2
votes
Accepted
Is the Zimnitsky Urine Test used in the West at all? What tests are used instead?
So far, I could not find evidence that the Zimnitsky test is applied in exactly the same way in western countries.
The urine specific gravity
is a parameter that is assessed during urine analysis.
...
- 304
2
votes
Accepted
What is the umbrella term for examination/diagnostics using tools, equipment and instruments?
The term "instrumental diagnostics" is commonly used in Russian and Eastern European texts and it appears as such in texts translated into English (search results for "instrumental diagnostics").
The ...
- 15.7k
2
votes
Accepted
What does it mean, that an epidemic curve is truncated at the level of diagnostic efficiency?
The epidemic curve depends on diagnostic methods and definitions. If your case definition requires a positive rt-PCR without typical clinical symptoms, and you don't do enough testing, then it will ...
- 13.2k
2
votes
Accepted
Are H. Pylori infections the most common cause of both gastric and duodenal ulcers? Is the urea breath test a useful diagnostic for both kinds?
This is an excellent description of exactly how the urea breath test is done and why it is useful in detecting whether there might be H. pylori.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123218/
...
- 985
2
votes
How accurate is dermoscopy to predict if a skin lesion is a basal cell carcinoma (BCC), and if it is, whether it is superficial or aggressive form?
According to this https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0190962213010554, and this, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjd.14499, sensitivity and specificity for BCC as ...
2
votes
Does this paper report miscalculated metrics?
It seems that they meant to say PPV(positive predictive value) and NPV instead of sensitivity and specificity.
This provided a positive predictive value (PPV) of 0.85 and a negative predictive value (...
- 516
2
votes
Accepted
Does this paper report miscalculated metrics?
As the other answer points out, the authors here have clearly calculated the positive and negative predictive values (PPV and NPV) rather than sensitivity/specificity. They report these clearly in ...
- 12.9k
1
vote
Why HIV Dna PCR is done for children born to HIV + mothers and not RNA PCR
HIV DNA PCR is found to be more specific for actual infection than RNA PCR .
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9951977/
I didn't read the whole thing
I guess DNA PCR actually detects reverse ...
- 11
1
vote
Accepted
How to evaluate the results of diagnostic studies: how to prove that new method is better than gold standard?
The accuracy of a new diagnostic test can be determined by comparing the test results with the results of a biopsy (taking a piece of tissue), which is done at some point after the test, and which ...
- 15.7k
1
vote
Beyond correlation, why is Frank's sign significant or not?
The pathophysiology of how DELC (diagonal ear lobe creases) and CAD (coronary artery disease) could be related has not been proven, but most likely has to do with the fact that both the earlobe and ...
- 131
1
vote
Is the Zimnitsky Urine Test used in the West at all? What tests are used instead?
For diabetes, it is important to control glucose levels. This can easily be done (to a varying degree of accuracy) by checking the urine for glucose.
Urine tests were once the main type of testing ...
- 6,722
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible