Biomedical Informatics 4th Edition by Edward Shortliffe, James Cimino

Exercise 1

You are concerned that a patient with a sore throat has a bacterial infection that would require antibiotic therapy (as opposed to a viral infection, for which no treatment is available). Your treatment threshold is 0.4, and based on the examination you estimate the probability of bacterial infection as 0.8. A test is available (TPR=0.75, TNR=0.85) that indicates the presence or absence of bacterial infection. Should you perform the test? Explain your reasoning. How would your analysis change if the test were extremely costly or involved a significant risk to the patient?