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Well said: it's a cheap and nasty term that glosses over sloppy thinking. Of course laboratories carry most of the responsibility for promoting its use as it's organisationally convenient. Different patients with different stages of known or suspected different disorders of the liver need different investigations. IMHO this should be reflected by the requesting of individual investigations, whether or not this is protocol-driven. Jonathan Kay Steve Angel 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 - > Albumin, bilirubin, and INR/PTT, as surrogate measures of biosynthetic and > detoxification capacity. The term has been corrupted to mean liver enzymes > (AST/ALT/GGT/ALP) which do NOT reflect liver function at all, but are rather > a reflection of hepatocellular/cholangiocellular integrity and health. > While I normally despise such sophistry, I feel justified in this instance; > liver enzymes are liver enzymes, and liver function is liver function, and > ne'er the twain should meet. The term is employed poorly at present. > > It's as ridiculous as dialing a pushbutton phone. > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > > Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at > http://profiles.msn.com. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%