Re: [Gnumed-devel] measurement tooltip

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 10:19:39AM -0700, Jim Busser wrote:

> I understand what Karsten is getting at, and encourage ongoing possible 
> "eurekas" on things that may be clinically informative. Unfortunately, 
> the bandwidth idea IMO needs to be retired, I am sorry to have to say :-(

I did like it, ha !   But oh well, it got to go.

> The concept may be that a result that is only slightly outside of a test 
> range that is normally tight, it is more confidently pathological than a 
> result that deviates, with higher amplitude, from a range that is wider. 

That's much better wording for what I had in mind :-)

> However, I have seen many results of the anticoagulation test INR which 
> has a reference range of 0.9-1.0 or 0.9-1.1 come back at 1.2 or even 1.3 
> at which I sometimes raise an eyebrow as to the latter but never did it 
> end up connecting to any pathology and that is a result deviating by 3x 
> (300%) of the bandwidth.

True enough.

> Also the concept being pursued is something like a standard deviation  
Not really, in strict mathematical terms because of ...

> but the problem is one cannot judge dispersion from a knowledge of only 
> the limits

... this.

> reference range, only an upper limit with lower limit zero. So in summary 
> I would say: keep thinking, more (and sometimes brilliant) ideas will 
> come !

For me ideas usually come with use. They ain't brilliant
particularly often, however :-/  :-)

> PS after enough people had been using GNUmed, we could always  
> contemplate a research study that could be based on database queries of 
> whether test abnormality as determined relative to bandwidth was a  
> predictor of reliability or severity of pathology.

Way to go !

Karsten
-- 
GPG key ID E4071346 @ wwwkeys.pgp.net
E167 67FD A291 2BEA 73BD  4537 78B9 A9F9 E407 1346