As an administrator of a chronic disease control program, you have two screening tests available for the early detection of a particular disease.
Screening test A has a sensitivity of 95% and specificity of 70%.
Screening test B has a sensitivity of 60% and specificity of 90%.
Given the following circumstances, which test would you choose? (Check A or B for each situation.)
If the disease were one whose presence caused a high level of anxiety, to avoid needless emotional suffering you wanted to reduce the probability that healthy people would be told they had the disease.
______A _______B
If the most important concern were not to overburden the health care system with unnecessary referrals for further diagnostic workups after the screening.
_______A _______B
If this were a treatable disease in its early stages, but fatal if not detected early.
_______A _______B
If this were a highly infectious disease in its early stages, but less infectious in its later stages and you had to protect the public from contact with the infectious stage of the disease.
_______A _______B