Journal of hospital medicine : an official publication of the Society of Hospital Medicine
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Comparative Study
Impact of reliance on CT pulmonary angiography on diagnosis of pulmonary embolism: a Bayesian analysis.
Spiral computed tomographic pulmonary angiography (CTPA) has become the primary test used to investigate suspected pulmonary embolism (PE) at many institutions, despite uncertainty regarding its sensitivity and specificity. Although CTPA-based diagnostic algorithms focus on minimizing the false-negative rate, we hypothesized that increasing use of CTPA also might lead to false-positive diagnoses. ⋯ Failure to utilize Bayesian reasoning when interpreting CTPA may lead to false-positive diagnoses of pulmonary embolism in a substantial proportion of patients.