One-sided Cut-off Values
In many cases, only one side of the range is usually of interest, such as with markers of pathology including cancer antigen 19-9, where it is generally without any clinical significance to have a value below what is usual in the population. Therefore, such targets are often given with only one limit of the reference range given, and, strictly, such values are rather cut-off values or threshold values.
They may represent both standard ranges and optimal health ranges. Also, they may represent an appropriate value to distinguish healthy person from a specific disease, although this gives additional variability by different diseases being distinguished. For example, for NT-proBNP, a lower cut-off value is used in distinguishing healthy babies from those with acyanotic heart disease, compared to the cut-off value used in distinguishing healthy babies from those with congenital nonspherocytic anemia.
Read more about this topic: Reference Range
Famous quotes containing the word values:
“Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)