Talk:Medical test

A test may examine treatments/drugs/other factors than disease

I have tried a couple of times to make the definition broader to cover more of the range of medical tests. Since the phrasing has evidently not been acceptable to other editors, please help in coming up with phrasing that is clearer or more acceptable. The last version of the lead sentence that I tried was:

A medical test is a kind of medical procedure performed to detect, diagnose, or evaluate disease, disease processes, susceptibility, or treatment.

The "or treatment" part is what keeps being removed. An example of the type of test that isn't covered by the current definition would be a measure of coagulation factors (e.g. Prothrombin time) used in monitoring Warfarin anticoagulation therapy. i.e. evaluation of a treatment so can adjust the dose. This is not a disease or disease process that is being evaluated. (There may be no disease present - e.g. anticoagulation may be as a preventative measure for those with a pacemaker.) There are lots of other examples where the test checks for presence or amount of a nutritional, therapeutic or other agent, which may not be part of a disease. Now, how to say that clearly and concisely? Zodon (talk) 09:54, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The "or treatment" belongs, but it feels grammatically out of context when inserted in the sentence as such. It would work in a second sentence or two, though, where you explain about 'testing to determine dosage, ...nutritional, ...therapeutic, etc.' Maybe start with 'In addition, medical tests are used to... yada, yada'. Heh. It's hard sometimes to find the wording. --Rcej (talk) 09:34, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Alternative classification

The following classification was found in the article of diagnostic test, but it appears to refer to medical tests in general, and therefore I linked that article to this one instead. The list is found below, but, in my point of view, its entries should be sorted into the multimodal classification system found here in medical test. Any assistance in this task is appreciated.

Types of medical tests Consulting room tests auscultation, including listening with a stethoscope weighing, and measuring height and girth measuring blood pressure taking the patient's pulse breath tests reflex tests eye examination ophthalmoscopy hearing test digital rectal examination vaginal examination More invasive examinations requiring sterile procedures biopsies lumbar puncture Requiring laboratory analysis Urine tests Stool tests Saliva tests Hair tests Blood tests Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) Complete blood count (CBC) Comprehensive metabolic panel (CMP) Arterial blood gas (ABG) Genetic_testing Requiring microscopy Smear tests such as Pap smears Requiring elaborate medical equipment X-rays barium enema intravenous pyelogram (IVP test) functional MRI endoscopy colposcopy blood test

Mikael Häggström (talk) 09:10, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Evaluation-section

I specified the evaluation-section as "Monitoring" and removed the other aspects mentioned in that section because they were not clearly distinct from diagnostic tests, and the reference didn't clearly point out any difference either. [1] Mikael Häggström (talk) 17:40, 10 October 2011 (UTC)