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Continuing Education in Anaesthesia, Critical Care & Pain 2008 8(6):221-223; doi:10.1093/bjaceaccp/mkn041
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© The Board of Management and Trustees of the British Journal of Anaesthesia [2008]. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Clinical tests: sensitivity and specificity

Abdul Ghaaliq Lalkhen, MB ChB FRCA
Specialist Registrar Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust
Hope Hospital
Salford M6 8HD
UK

Anthony McCluskey, BSc MB ChB FRCA
Consultant
Department of Anaesthesia
Stockport NHS Foundation Trust Stepping Hill Hospital
Stockport SK2 7JE
UK
Tel: +44 (0161) 419 5869 Fax: +44 (0161) 419 5045 E-mail: a.mccluskey4@ntlworld.com

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Key points

Sensitivity and specificity are terms used to evaluate a clinical test. They are independent of the population of interest subjected to the test.
Positive and negative predictive values are useful when considering the value of a test to a clinician. They are dependent on the prevalence of the disease in the population of interest.
The sensitivity and specificity of a quantitative test are dependent on the cut-off value above or below which the test is positive. In general, the higher the sensitivity, the lower the specificity, and vice versa.
Receiver operator characteristic curves are a plot of false positives against true positives for all cut-off values. The area under the curve of a perfect test is 1.0 and that of a useless test, no better than tossing a coin, is 0.5.

 

Many clinical tests are used to confirm or refute the presence of a . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   Sensitivity, specificity, and other terms
 
Sensitivity

Specificity

Positive predictive value

Negative predictive value

Likelihood ratio


   Dependence of PPV and NPV on disease prevalence
 

   Receiver operator characteristic curves
 

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