Question
How would I go about understanding and computing below questions? Any suggestions or ideas greatly appreciated. Accurately distinguishing lung cancer from benign lung disease remains
How would I go about understanding and computing below questions? Any suggestions or ideas greatly appreciated.
Accurately distinguishing lung cancer from benign lung disease remains challenging, even with the use of imaging scans; computed tomography (CT) scans are known to have high sensitivity but poor specificity for lung cancer diagnosis. Tumor markers, molecules produced by a tumor associated with a cancer or by the body in response to a cancer, may be useful for clinical diagnosis. Consider two tumor markers for lung cancer, CYFRA 21-1 and CEA, which tend to be elevated in patients with lung cancer relative to those with benign lung disease. A study was conducted on patients with known lung cancer status to assess how these tumor markers could be used for clinical diagnosis. The study team observed that in patients with lung cancer, CYFRA 21-1 is normally distributed with mean 4.7 ng/mL and standard deviation 9.2 ng/mL while CEA is normally distributed with mean 5.9 ng/mL and standard deviation 19.8 ng/mL. In patients with benign lung disease, CYFRA 21-1 is normally distributed with mean 1.6 ng/mL and standard deviation 4.3 ng/mL while CEA is normally distributed with mean 2.2 ng/mL and standard deviation 5.3 ng/mL. Use the data from this study to answer the following questions.
i. Compute the sensitivity and specificity of a diagnosis test based on classifying patients with CYFRA 21-1 level greater than 3.3 ng/mL as having lung cancer.
ii. Compute the sensitivity and specificity of a diagnosis test based on classifying patients with CEA level greater than 5.0 ng/mL as having lung cancer.
iii. Explain the reasoning behind why a diagnostic test with low sensitivity may not be recommended for use in the general population but appropriate for use in high-risk groups, such as patients presenting with several risk factors or symptoms strongly predictive of lung cancer. Use language accessible to someone who has not taken a statistics course. Limit your answer to no more than six sentences.
iv. Suppose a high-risk patient is tested for elevated CYFRA 21-1 level and found to have CYFRA 21-1 level below the cutoff in part
i. Explain whether it seems reasonable to rule out lung cancer for this patient based on this test result and the test features computed in part i. Limit your answer to no more than six sentences, referencing numerical results as necessary.
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