Concept
Sensitivity (Screening and Diagnostic Testing)
Also Known As True Positive Rate
Preventive Care
Sensitivity is the probability that a screening or diagnostic test returns a positive result, conditioned on the person truly having the condition being tested for: a highly sensitive test misses few true cases, making it useful for ruling a condition out when it comes back negative. Sensitivity and its counterpart specificity are the two statistics epidemiologists and clinicians use together to judge how well a test performs, and the two are usually in tension: raising a test's sensitivity by loosening its threshold for a positive result tends to lower its specificity, and vice versa, so no single test-design choice maximizes both at once. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
First Described YearSourced to the subject's own account First Described EraSourced to the subject's own account1947, introduced by biostatistician Jacob Yerushalmy as a statistical measure of diagnostic test accuracy; comparable assessments of test accuracy trace back to early 1900s serology work on complement fixation testing for syphilis, before these two terms existed. 1 Concept ClassSourced to the subject's own account Connections
Associated With
Read together, never alone, as the two halves of a screening test's performance, in a documented trade-off with each other.
In Branch
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Sensitivity and Specificity
WikipediaLead section
Sensitivity (true positive rate) is the probability of a positive test result, conditioned on the individual truly having the condition.
Application to screening study section
For all testing, both diagnoses and screening, there is usually a trade-off between sensitivity and specificity, such that higher sensitivities will mean lower specificities and vice versa.
Article body, sentence on the 1947 introduction
The terms "sensitivity" and "specificity" were introduced by American biostatistician Jacob Yerushalmy in 1947.
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