What I would tell a new member reading about panel for the first time: the confident posts are not the reliable ones, and the reliable ones are longer.
Which panel is worth repeating and which is worth ignoring posts 121–134
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1 · go to the accepted answer.
Post #118 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
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 strength of my opinion here exceeds the strength of my evidence.
Post #120 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
Adding a null result on panel. I looked, carefully, and found nothing, and null results deserve posting precisely because they never are.
Glycaemic markers integrate over different periods. A point glucose and a longer-term marker disagreeing is not a contradiction; it is two different questions.
Where the panel reasoning breaks down for me is the step from the group result to the individual case. That step is almost never argued for.
A note on scope: what I am saying about panel applies to the case in the first post and I would not extend it further without checking.
Confirming post #124 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
Where a panel includes a calculated value, that value inherits the imprecision of everything it was calculated from and is usually reported without an interval.
If that reads as pedantic, it is, and it has saved me twice.
Glycaemic markers integrate over different periods. A point glucose and a longer-term marker disagreeing is not a contradiction; it is two different questions.
Worth separating two things that post #129 runs together.
General information rather than advice about anyone's care. A single value outside a reference interval, on a single draw, in an otherwise unremarkable panel, is usually uninformative.
If anyone can point at the primary source I would be grateful.
Reframing panel 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.
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