A large regional healthcare system is evaluating a newly developed stool DNA panel for colorectal cancer screening. In clinical validation trials conducted at a specialized high-risk genetics clinic, where the prevalence of colorectal cancer is , the test demonstrated a sensitivity of and a specificity of . The healthcare system's administration now plans to deploy this stool DNA panel as a primary screening tool for average-risk adults in the general community, where the prevalence of colorectal cancer is approximately . Assuming the intrinsic test characteristics remain constant, which of the following is the most accurate statement regarding the community-wide deployment of this test?
- The majority of patients who test positive in the general community will not actually have the diseaseCevap
- BThe negative predictive value of the test will decrease compared to its performance in the high-risk clinic
- CThe intrinsic proportion of healthy individuals who incorrectly test positive will increase
- DPatients with a positive test result should undergo a confirmatory test with higher sensitivity
- EThe test should be avoided for primary screening because its false-negative rate will rise unacceptably
Cevap
The majority of patients who test positive in the general community will not actually have the disease.
Positive predictive value (PPV) is highly dependent on disease prevalence. When a test is moved from a high-prevalence setting () to a low-prevalence setting (), the PPV drops significantly. In the general community, for every patients screened, only about actually have the disease, yielding approximately or true positive results (). Meanwhile, out of the healthy patients, a false-positive rate ( specificity) will generate approximately false positives (). Because the false positives vastly outnumber the or true positives, the vast majority of positive test results in this community setting will not actually have the disease (a PPV of roughly ).
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Anahtar Kavram
The relationship between disease prevalence and predictive values (PPV and NPV).