Are the results for the diagnostic test clinically significant?
A diagnostic test is clinically significant if knowledge of the results of the diagnostic test can substantially alter your belief about whether your patient has a particular disease. The likelihood ratio will help you answer this question. A likelihood ratio for a positive result smaller than 2 or a likelihood ratio for a negative result larger than 0.5 is pretty much worthless. Can you extrapolate the results? Medical research is often conducted in an idealized setting that makes the research easier to run but which makes it difficult to generalize the results to your particular patients. Look at the inclusion and exclusion criteria in the study and see if the research population is drawn more narrowly than your patients. Also examine the table of demographics to see if they are comparable to the demographics of your patients (e.g., comparable ages and comparable mixes of race, ethnicity, and gender). Is the diagnostic test available, affordable, accurate, and precise in your setting
