Interpretation by Physicians of Clinical Laboratory Results

Abstract

AS both the number and cost of clinical laboratory tests continue to increase at an accelerating rate,1 physicians are faced with the task of comprehending and acting on a rising flood tide of information. We conducted a small survey to obtain some idea of how physicians do, in fact, interpret a laboratory result.MethodsWe asked 20 house officers, 20 fourth-year medical students and 20 attending physicians, selected in 67 consecutive hallway encounters at four Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals, the following question: "If a test to detect a disease whose prevalence is 1/1000 has a false positive rate of . . .