NR 503 Week 2 Discussion – Screening Reliability

NR 503 Week 2 Discussion – Screening ReliabilityFrom the U.S. Preventive Task Force website site.)Links to an external site., choose one screening test that might be considered in primary care. Define the test, its positive predictive value, reliability and validity. Discuss patient medical or family history that may alter your recommendation for screening? Dr. Costello and class, While the benefits and harms of mammography screening have been debated heatedly in the past years, it is a helpful diagnostic tool that should be considered in primary care. The main benefit of mammography screening is to check for breast cancer in women with or without signs and symptoms of the disease (Louberg, Lousdal, Bretthauer, & Kalager, 2015). It is an xray picture of the breast to visualize and magnify certain areas to help physicians make an accurate diagnosis. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force [USPSTF] (2014) recommends biennial screening mammography for women aged 50 to 74 years old. According to Gordis (2014), a positive predictive value determines the probability that the patient has the disease if the test results are positive. To calculate the positive predictive value, the number of true positives is divided by the total number who tested positive. A screening test is deemed reliable if the results obtained is replicated every time the test is repeated, regardless of the sensitivity and specificity of a test (Gordis, 2014). While mammography testing has effectively helped to reduce breast-cancer abnormalities, the reliability is not extremely high. False-positive results and overdiagnosis can occur with mammography screening. A potential abnormality can be seen on the test, but may not necessarily mean cancer is present. Additional testing would then be recommended to determine further diagnosis. On the other hand, validity is defined as the ability of a test to determine who has a disease and who does not (Gordis, 2014). It has two components