Getting Sensitive: Diagnostic Sensitivity and Specificity Simplified

Getting Sensitive: Diagnostic Sensitivity and Specificity Simplified

What Do We Mean by Diagnostic Sensitivity? In clinical diagnostics, questions about the sensitivity of an assay will inevitably surface. But what does “sensitivity” mean exactly? The lowest quantity of the given analyte that an assay can detect is often called sensitivity – and to be clear, this quantity is the analytical sensitivity or Limit…