Piersante
Like Paul Glasziou, my preference is for diagnostic cohort study;
intuitively it makes more sense as you are gathering a cohort of
participants.
The only rationale I can discern for using the term cross-sectional is that
a diagnostic study is about a cross-section of disease presentation, but it
will take some time to get adequate numbers even of consecutive patients
enrolled and then followed up.
Another term I like but is little used is diagnostic case-control - not a
good design but one that is often seen especially in early evaluations of
diagnostic tests. Using the terms cohort and case-control distinguishes
these designs in ways that cross-sectional, observational etc does not.
Andrew Jull RN MA(Appl)
Research Fellow
Clinical Trials Research Unit
School of Population Health
Tamaki Campus
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019 Tel: +64 9 373-7599 Ext 84744
Auckland Fax: +64 9 373-1710
New Zealand Email: [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Piersante Sestini [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, 2 November 2004 7:50 a.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Diagnostic test studies
At 10.41 01/11/2004 -0500, Doggett, David wrote:
> Really, "diagnostic study" is a class unto itself. It should not be
> encumbered with the stigma that"observational", "cross-sectional", or
> other non-RCT terms
I mostly agree with what you say, but just "diagnostic study" would be too
generic for my students to accept. They would argue that also a
case-control study could be used as a "diagnostic study".
Furthermore, "diagnostic study" here (and probably elsewhere) is sometimes
used as a synonymous for "diagnostic test", so it may be even more confusing
Paul Glasziou wrote:
>Though I like the name "diagnostic cohort" study, most other folk working
>in diagnostics are unhappy with the time frame it implies. So
>cross-sectional analytic study is the most accepted term for the
>reasonable design of taking a series of patients with the same presenting
>complaint and the applying some agreed gold standard to all cases.
What I don't understand is the meaning "analytic" here, as opposed to
"conventional" cross sectional studies. Laboratory and statistical analyses
are performed in both kinds of study. What am I missing?
thanks
Piersante Sestini
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