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 . . .