Questions tagged [diagnostics]
The diagnostics tag has no summary.
55 questions
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Can cold water induced arrhythmia be used diagnostically?
I ran across an extraordinary claim in the Sunday Times:
Professor Mike Tipton of the University of Portsmouth, who has been studying the effects of cold water on the body for 40 years, found that ...
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Alternatives to the AHI metric for sleep apnea?
The commonly accepted metric for diagnosing sleep apnea and determining its severity is the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI).
AHI turns out to be a grossly misleading metric, though, for the following ...
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Are standard medical exam questionnaires meant to invite discussion?
Let's say a patient goes to a medical examination. The doctor starts verbally going through a standardized exam questionnaire, for example, something like:
Mini-Mental State Exam
MIDAS test for ...
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Why are diagnostics based on the microbiome so slow to adopt?
Edit 2023/09/06: Many comments so far raise the fact that we can't tell whether there is causation or correlation between an illness and the corresponding microbiome of the patient. My point isn't to ...
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Does direct microscopic examination help detect contamination during sample collection in clinical bacteriology?
Background information
Direct microscopic examination (or Direct smear) typically refer to microscopic examination of a specimen before any culture or inoculation is performed.
Question
Can direct ...
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Can the presence of Extended Spectrum β-Lactamases affects the action of AmpC beta-lactamases?
Double disk synergy test (DDST):
This method uses the cephalosporin discs and clavulanic disc alone.
The principle is applying the cephalosporin discs next to the
clavulanic disc with a distance of ...
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Does this paper report miscalculated metrics?
During a literature search I stumbled upon this paper, which evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasonography for the detection of gallstones (compared to the gold standard cholecystectomy).
Their ...
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How accurate is reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) to predict whether a basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is infiltrative or superficial?
Reflectance confocal microscopy (RCM) is a noninvasive imaging technique that has been used to diagnose basal cell carcinoma (BCC). How accurate is RCM to predict whether a BCC is infiltrative or ...
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How are the FPR and FNR estimated for a new diagnostic test?
Let's consider a case of a test for presence/absence of a viral infection. When we have certainty as to whether a specific individual is carrying the virus, it is easy to estimate the False Positive ...
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Can someone help figure out my shoulder problem? [closed]
I'm not really into medicine or anything, just have a quick question. So since I was younger, I had this shoulder cyst thing since maybe 1st grade or something and nobody could diagnose it. It ...
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Can tablets containing iron or high fibre food trigger anxiety and hypermetabolism?
Is there any well-understood way or any info, in the medical literature, regarding the possibility of iron tablets and high fibre foods triggering anxiety, panic attacks and hypermetabolism ...
user20181
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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? [closed]
https://dermnetnz.org/cme/dermoscopy-course/dermoscopy-of-basal-cell-carcinoma/ mentions that one can use dermoscopy to diagnose basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and their subtype (nodular, superficial, etc....
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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?
H. pylori infections are a frequent cause of peptic ulcers, and a positive result from a urea breath test indicating the likely presence of H. pilori may be followed by treatment that includes one or ...
user16606
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How do you tell a brain-dead patient from a living one?
One theme that's been explored somewhat in popular culture is brain death, and the interesting dynamics of what separates dead from alive.
In chemistry, death is defined as the loss of the ability to ...
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What does it mean, that an epidemic curve is truncated at the level of diagnostic efficiency?
Recently I've heard in one interview with a Professor of Epidemiology, that in my country the epidemic curve of COVID-19 is not flattened (contrary to popular opinion), but rather is truncated at the ...
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