Abstract

Emergency physicians, like other specialists, are faced with different patients and various situations every day. They have to use ancillary diagnostic tools like laborato-ry tests and imaging studies to be able to manage them (1-8). In most cases, numerous tests are available. Tests with the least error and the most accuracy are more de-sirable. The power of a test to separate patients from healthy people determines its accuracy and diagnostic value (9). Therefore, a test with 100% accuracy should be the first choice. This does not happen in reality as the accuracy of a test varies for different diseases and in dif-ferent situations. For example, the value of D-dimer for diagnosing pulmonary embolism varies based on pre-test probability. It shows high accuracy in low risk patient and low accuracy in high risk ones.

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