BACKGROUND Hypothyroidism is a common, potentially treatable endocrine disorder. Since hypothyroidism is not always associated with the signs and symptoms typically attributed to it, the diagnosis is often missed. Conversely, patients with typical signs and symptoms may not have the disease when laboratory tests are performed. AIMS We aimed to determine the accuracy of physical examination in...

OBJECTIVE To determine the accuracy with which cervico-vaginal fetal fibronectin predicts preterm delivery using systematic quantitative overview of the available literature. DESIGN Online searching of MEDLINE database (1966 to April 1996), scanning of bibliography of known primary and review articles and review of recent journal issues. Study selection, assessment of study quality and data e...

introduction: in cases of blunt abdominal traumas, predicting the possible intra-abdominal injuries is still a challenge for the physicians involved with these patients. therefore, this study was designed, to evaluate the accuracy of urinalysis in predicting intra-abdominal injuries. methods: patients aged 15 to 65 years with blunt abdominal trauma who were admitted to emergency departments wer...

BACKGROUND The appropriate approach to women with mild dyskaryotic changes on Papanicolaou smear is subject to controversy. Our aim was to assess the usefulness of cervicography as a diagnostic test in detecting cervical cancer or its precursors. METHODS We undertook an extensive literature search looking for pertinent studies of cervicography published between 1966 and 1996. Eligible studies...

Hausfater and colleagues stated that in febrile adult patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) a procalcitonin (PCT) ≥0.2 mcg/l can help physicians to identify bacterial/parasitic infections [1]. We disagree and want to illustrate that by calculating likelihood ratios (LR). A LR is a semi-quantitative measure of the performance of a diagnostic test, expressing the magnitude by which...

BACKGROUND Most valid methods to measure treatment adherence require time and resources, and they are not easily applied in highly demanding Primary Health Care Clinics (PHCC). The objective of this study was to determine sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, likelihood ratios, and post-test probabilities of two novel questionnaires as proxy measurements of treatment adherence in Type-2 ...

BACKGROUND As low birthweight (i.e., birthweight < 2500 g) is a major determinant of neonatal mortality and morbidity, the pre-delivery detection of low birthweight is clinically advantageous. This study was performed to determine whether ultrasound is suitable for use in primary screening to detect low birthweight newborns. METHODS The primary outcomes included sensitivity, specificity, and ...

The accuracy of computed tomography (CT) imaging for the diagnosis of acute pulmonary embolism (PE) was reviewed. Single detector CT, based on pooled data, showed a sensitivity of 73% and multidetector CT, mostly 4-slice, showed a sensitivity of 83%. Respective specificities were 87% and 96%. Among patients with suspected PE evaluated with single slice CT, 20% of patients found to have venous t...

We conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the diagnostic values of mean cerebral blood volume for recurrent and radiation injury in glioma patients. We performed systematic electronic searches for eligible study up to August 8, 2016. Bivariate mixed effects models were used to estimate the combined sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratios, negative likelihood ratios, diagnostic odds ...