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Specificity vs Sensitivity

Specificity vs Sensitivity

Sensitivity and Specificity are extremely similar sounding words with huge differences in their definitions. It is important to understand the difference between the terms and know what these words can tell us. However, in order to understand the concepts of sensitivity and specificity, we first have to understand the concepts for false negatives and false positives. When a person takes a test for any disease, there are 4 possible outcomes for test. The first outcome is a true positive, where the person has the disease and the test results are positive. The second outcome is a false-positive, where the person does not have the disease but the test results show that they do have it. The third outcome is a true negative, where the person does not have the disease and the test results reflect that. The final outcome is a false-negative, where the person has the disease but the test results show that they do not have it.

Sensitivity is the ability of a test to correctly identify patients with the disease. More precisely, sensitivity is how often a test produces a positive result for people who are actually positive. An extremely sensitive test will be able to correctly identify patients with the disease and very rarely produce a false-negative result. For example, if a COVID-19 test has a 75% sensitivity, it will produce a true positive result (Person has the disease and the test results show that they have the disease) 75% of the time. However, 25% of the time, the test will produce a false-negative result(A person has the disease but the test results show that they do not have the disease).

Specificity is the ability of a test to correctly identify patients with no disease. More specifically, specificity is how often a test produces a negative result for people who are actually negative. An extremely specific test will be able to correctly identify patients that do not have the disease and very rarely produce a false-positive result. For example, if a COVID-19 test has a 75% specificity, it will produce a true negative result (A person has no disease and the test results show that they do not have the disease). However, 25% of the time, the test will produce a false-positive result (A person has no disease but the test results show that they do have the disease).

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