Surely it doesn't matter: LFT is a generic name for a group of tests just as 'Industrial action' is the generic term for laying down tools and causing Industrial inaction.
We could apply the same logic to lots of other phrases we frequently use in medicine:
THe patient is 'critical' - presumably they are complaining about the quality of the surgeon's bow tie , or the food, or the house officer's BO etc.
'stable' - they haven't fallen over yet...
The precise meaning of the words doesn't matter - Whenever Tony Blair talks we don't dissect the meaning of every word to see whether what he has said makes sense - we automatically know that he is lying through his teeth and that the spin doctors have told him what to say so that it sounds as if he is announcing something good - but he isn't really:
Language is a means of passing information quickly and effectively: It is more important that other people know what is meant by a particular term than it is that the term says exactly what it is. So when a politician speaks he thinks he is informing us BUT we know he is lying; when we talk of a liver functio test we and other people know what we mean - a few enzymes, a couple of proteins and possibly calcium and that they are not strictly liver FUNCTION tests.
TIM
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Prof. T. Reynolds,
Clinical Chemistry Dept,
Queens Hospital,
Belvedere Rd.,
Burton-on-Trent,
STAFFS,
DE13 0RB.
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Tel: +44 (0)1283 511511 ext. 4035
Fax: +44 (0)1283 593064
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-----Original Message-----
From: c=GB;a=NHS;p=NHS NATIONAL INT;dda:RFC-822=acb-clin-chem-gen-request(a)mailbase.ac.uk;
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 1:33 PM
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Subject: RE: LFT?
>
>
> --- Steve Angel <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > I
> find the term "LFT" as it is used at present to be
> > intellectually
> > unsettling. Strictly speaking, liver function tests
> > ought to refer to those
> > tests which are commonly used as a measure of liver
> > biological function ...........-
>
How about Liver Dysfunction Tets? Is that intellectually less
unsettling? Or do members think it is equally flawed - most being not
specific for liver?
David Cook
Dept. of Clinical Biochemistry, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Tel: 0191 232 5131 ext 24357
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