Building a sensible monitoring schedule with your prescriber posts 61–90
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
Post #60 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
Time of day: some biomarkers vary across the day. Cortisol in the morning differs from cortisol in the evening. Comparing results from different times of day is comparing things that are not the same.
Building a sensible monitoring schedule is worth one more sentence than it usually gets, and the sentence is the one about how the number was arrived at.
Narrowing post #63, because the general version has more than one answer.
A trend needs at least three points to be a trend. Two points are a line and a line through noise is still a line.
I have kept the units in throughout, for the obvious reason.
The strongest argument against my own position on building a sensible monitoring schedule, stated as well as I can state it, since nobody else has yet.
Repeat before acting is standard practice for an isolated abnormal result on most analytes, and it is standard for a reason.
A note on scope: what I am saying about building a sensible monitoring schedule applies to the case in the first post and I would not extend it further without checking.
Where the building a sensible monitoring schedule reasoning breaks down for me is the step from the group result to the individual case. That step is almost never argued for.
Collapsed as off-topic by two members at trust level 3 or above
Post #70 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
A trend needs at least three points to be a trend. Two points are a line and a line through noise is still a line.
The short version is the first sentence; the rest is why.
Nobody has said the unglamorous part of building a sensible monitoring schedule yet, so: most of the variation is explained by things that are boring to write about and easy to check.
My experience of building a sensible monitoring schedule contradicts the reply above. I am posting it as a data point rather than as a refutation, because one person's experience is exactly that.
Worth separating two things that post #72 runs together.
Time of day: some biomarkers vary across the day. Cortisol in the morning differs from cortisol in the evening. Comparing results from different times of day is comparing things that are not the same.
Posted with less confidence than the sentence structure implies.
Reading back through the building a sensible monitoring schedule threads from last year, the same three questions come up every time and only one of them has ever been answered properly. That seems like a documentation gap rather than a knowledge gap.
Picking up post #74: that is the part I would want checked first.
Glycaemic markers integrate over different periods. A point glucose and a longer-term marker disagreeing is not a contradiction; it is two different questions.
I have said this before in a thread nobody could find, so it is worth repeating.
Saving this. It is the version I will quote when the question comes round again.
The version of building a sensible monitoring schedule that circulates here is a simplification of a simplification. It is not wrong, but it has lost the conditions under which it holds, and those conditions are where the interesting cases live.
Collapsed as off-topic by two members at trust level 3 or above
Answering the question post #76 raises rather than the one it answers.
I have no financial interest in anything named in this thread and I want to say so before I comment on building a sensible monitoring schedule, because it is the sort of subject where it matters.
No disagreement from me. Posting only so the question does not look ignored.
Time of day: some biomarkers vary across the day. Cortisol in the morning differs from cortisol in the evening. Comparing results from different times of day is comparing things that are not the same.
Where I would look next, rather than where I would stop.
The claim about building a sensible monitoring schedule upthread is stronger than its source supports. I have read the source. The source says "associated with" and the post says "causes".
Building a sensible monitoring schedule has a well-known answer and a correct answer, and the interesting work is establishing that they are the same. Nobody has done that here yet.