Maguire Paul A, Looi Jeffrey Cl
Academic Unit of Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine, School of Medicine and Psychology, The Australian National University, Canberra Hospital, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
Consortium of Australian-Academic Psychiatrists for Independent Policy and Research Analysis (CAPIPRA), Canberra, ACT, Australia.
Australas Psychiatry. 2025 Feb;33(1):162-167. doi: 10.1177/10398562241300887. Epub 2024 Nov 21.
To demonstrate the application of Bayes' theorem to diagnostic testing in clinical settings, especially with respect to rare diseases, enhancing an understanding of pre-test probability and its implications.
Bayes' theorem enables the revision of the conditional probabilities of an event occurring when new information is acquired. It demonstrates that when the prevalence of a disease is very low, there are a high number of false positives, thereby reducing the clinical utility and cost benefit profile of the diagnostic test, even in the presence of relatively high sensitivities and specificities of the chosen test.
展示贝叶斯定理在临床诊断测试中的应用，特别是针对罕见疾病，增强对检验前概率及其影响的理解。
贝叶斯定理能够在获得新信息时修正事件发生的条件概率。它表明，当疾病的患病率非常低时，会出现大量假阳性结果，从而降低诊断测试的临床实用性和成本效益，即使所选测试具有相对较高的敏感性和特异性。
