Lab tests don’t make diagnoses, doctors do.

20/02/2008 12:52

A bad title for an questionable article .

Check the level of troponin in the blood is not enough to make a rational and accurate diagnosis of myocardial infarction, and more generally the laboratory tests should not be overstated. So says an editorial published in the American Journal of Medicine.

Recently, a task force of members of the European Society of Cardiology, American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, World Heart Federation and the World Health Organization has developed a revision of the definition of myocardial infarction drawn in 2000. Despite new findings have been taken into consideration and proposed the new clinical and diagnostic procedures are proposed and described the high level of troponin is still proposed as a golden standard for diagnosis of myocardial infarction.

’Because of inaccurate or inappropriate interpretation of abnormal levels of troponin, many clinical arrives to underestimate the use of this diagnostic marker in the diagnosis of MI.’ said Joseph S. Alpert, a professor of medicine at the University of Arizona. ‘It is always necessary a collection of accurate history of the patient, its physiological parameters, the findings of other diagnostic tool (imaging, EKG, etc..), before make a diagnosis.

good thoughs, bad spoken.

Collegamenti associati

• LAlpert JS. Lab tests don’t make diagnoses, doctors do. The American Journal of Medicine 2008; doi: 10.1016/j.amjmed.2007.10.015
• Yahoo - Le diagnosi le fanno i medici, non i test di laboratorio