Review
Current investigations used to assess syncope
W Arthur, G C KayeDepartment of
Cardiology, Castle Hill Hospital, Castle Road, Cottingham, East
Yorkshire HU16 5JQ, UK
Correspondence to: Dr Wayne Arthur, Department of Cardiology, Peterborough District Hospital, Thorpe Road, Peterborough PE3 5DE, UK wayne@denecres.freeserve.co.uk
Submitted 30 December
1999;
Accepted 16 February 2000
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
 |
Introduction |
|---|
Following a thorough history, physical examination, and electrocardiography, the cause of syncope remains undiagnosed in around 50% of patients.1 Diagnostic investigations are performed to confirm a suspected diagnosis or to explore another potential cause. When exploring the cause of syncope, features of the initial history and examination should direct the investigations wherever possible.
The usefulness of a test can be described in various terms. The
sensitivity of a test measures how effective it is in detecting those
individuals who are truly diseased (true positives). The specificity of
a test measures how effective it is in detecting those individuals who
are not diseased (true negatives). The positive predictive value of a
test is the probability of actually having a condition given that the
test result is positive. The negative predictive value is the
probability of not having the disease given that the test is negative.
The diagnostic yield of a test
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
