Revisiting: How to bring a laboratory report to an appointment usefully

Revisiting: How to bring a laboratory report to an appointment usefully — setting out what I have, and where I think it stops being reliable.

Asking about bring a laboratory directly, because I have read four threads on it and each answered a slightly different question.

The version I want answered is the narrow one: given the method stated below, is the result within what anyone else has seen? I am not asking what it means yet.

Method, numbers and the two assumptions I am aware of making are below. If the assumptions are wrong that is more useful to me than agreement.

Bring a laboratory 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.

On the opening post — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.

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.

Picking up post #3: that is the part I would want checked first.

Reframing bring a laboratory slightly, because I think the disagreement is about the question rather than the answer. If the question is "does it happen", yes. If it is "how often", nobody here knows.

Bring a laboratory: I would want to see the raw numbers rather than the summary before agreeing. Summaries lose exactly the information that would settle this.

I came in to disagree and I am leaving without a disagreement.

Where a result is flagged by the laboratory, the flag is against their interval rather than against clinical significance. Those are different thresholds.

This follows post #7 rather than contradicting it.

The claim about bring a laboratory upthread is stronger than its source supports. I have read the source. The source says "associated with" and the post says "causes".

Post #7 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.

I would be cautious about generalising from the bring a laboratory example above. It is a good example. It is one example.

Building on post #7 rather than restating it.

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.

Adding this to the thread rather than to the wiki, because I am not confident enough for the wiki.

That is clearer than the version I had in my head. Thank you.

Where I part company with post #10, and it is a narrow parting.

A request rather than an answer: could whoever has the primary source for bring a laboratory post it? I have seen the claim three times this month and each version had lost a qualifier.

Adding the measurement that post #12 says would settle it.

What would change my mind on bring a laboratory is a second dataset collected by someone with no stake in the first. Until then I hold it loosely and I would rather say so than pretend to more.

Repeat before acting is standard practice for an isolated abnormal result on most analytes, and it is standard for a reason.

Adding a source would improve this post and I do not have one to hand.