A state of abnormal responsiveness to stimulation.
In epidemiology, related to tests of validity. The percent of all cases that are identified correctly, specificity.
A measure of the ability of a diagnostic or screening test, or other predictor to correctly identify the positive (or sick) people, the proportion of true positive cases (sick people) correctly identified as positive. Sensitivity=true positives÷(true positives +/false negatives). A test may be quite sensitive without being very specific.
The fact of being able to detect and respond to an outside stimulus.
The rate of positive responses in a test from persons with a specific disease. A high rate of sensitivity means a low rate of people being incorrectly classed as negative.
Capacity to feel or react to a stimulus. ADJ. sensitive; in statistics, proportion of people who actually had a given condition and are correctly identified by a test; a sensitive test has a low false-negative rate. An insensitive test has a high false-negative rate and should not be relied upon to exclude abnormality or disease. For example, an electrocardiogram for heart disease is relatively insensitive—many patients with coronary artery disease, including acute heart attacks, have a negative result. Other tests, such as nuclear medicine treadmill scans, are far more sensitive due to a much lower percentage of false-negative results.
A measure of the reliability of a screening test based on the proportion of people with a specific disease who react positively to the test (the higher the sensitivity the fewer false negatives). This contrasts with specificity, which is the proportion of people free from disease who react negatively to the test (i.e. the higher the specificity the fewer the false positives). Though these are theoretically independent variables, most screening tests are so designed that if the sensitivity is increased the specificity is reduced and the number of false positives may rise to wasteful proportions.
The proportion of people with a condition who test positive in tests for that condition, so sensitivity is a measure of the existence of false negatives. It is the opposite of specificity, which is the proportion of those cases who screen negative who do not have the condition a measure of false positives. The ideal screening test has high sensitivity and specificity.
In assessing the value of a diagnostic test, procedure, or clinical observation, the proportion of people who truly have a specific disease and are so identified by the test.