Are Reporting Standards of Diagnostic Test Evaluation Unrealistic?

Development and Validation of a Magnetic Resonance Imaging Reference Criterion for Defining a Positive Sacroiliac Joint Magnetic Resonance Imaging Finding in Spondyloarthritis

“…Consequently, this data-driven study supports the case of including both erosion and BME as a basis for defining a positive SI joint MRI finding for the classification of axial SpA, as proposed in an earlier study (3). Studies on the diagnostic utility of a given test should include healthy individuals and controls with a disorder that is clinically challenging to differentiate from the disease under observation (19). In both inception cohorts of the present study, BME was indicated in up to 24% of NSBP controls and in 30% of healthy individuals.…”

Diagnostic Utility of Candidate Definitions for Demonstrating Axial Spondyloarthritis on Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Spine

“…Diagnostic utility (according to Lassere ) was determined by calculating mean sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative likelihood ratios (LRs) for the data recorded by 4 readers for patients with nonradiographic axial SpA or AS versus patients with nonspecific back pain in cohorts A and B. We calculated the diagnostic utility of CIL and CFL cutoff values proposed in the literature (≥2 or ≥3 CILs and ≥6 CFLs) for all possible thresholds (from ≥1 CIL to ≥10 CILs and from ≥1 CFL to ≥10 CFLs) and for combinations of CILs plus CFLs that we regarded as potentially clinically relevant (≥2, ≥3, or ≥4 CILs plus ≥2, ≥3, or ≥4 CFLs).…”

Donald Mainland: anatomist, educator, thinker, medical statistician, trialist, rheumatologist

“…24 Even 25 years after his death and about a half-century after its publication, an editorialist in the Journal of Rheumatology recommended Mainland’s Elementary Medical Statistics ‘to all young clinician scientists’. 25…”