I have searched prior posts and I haven’t seen a good explanation that seems to help my seemingly tiny brain grasp this concept.
Highly sensitive tests rule OUT a disease. To me, this means if the test is negative, it’s likely to be a true negative because you are pretty certain that it’s an accurate negative result.
However, I just did a review question that told me sensitivity detects true positives and now I’m confused.
For example, D-dimer is a highly sensitive test. If it’s not elevated, we feel fairly certain the disease we are ruling out is ruled out. Wouldn’t this be a true negative? (Obviously not according to the world, but can someone please ELI5??)
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High sensitivity means just that, highly sensitive to the thing being measured. This means it is very likely to pick up on the thing if it is there = unlikely to miss a true positive, so it’s useful for ruling out the thing.
>For example, D-dimer is a highly sensitive test. If it’s not elevated, we feel fairly certain the disease we are ruling out is ruled out. Wouldn’t this be a true negative?
If the test says negative and you are negative, it’s a true negative.
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