Sanjeev D Chunilal, John W Eikelboom, John Attia, Massimo Miniati, Akbar A Panju, David L Simel, Jeffrey S Ginsberg
CONTEXT: Experienced clinicians' gestalt is useful in estimating the pretest probability for pulmonary embolism and is complementary to diagnostic testing, such as lung scanning. However, it is unclear whether recently developed clinical prediction rules, using explicit features of clinical examination, are comparable with clinicians' gestalt. If so, clinical prediction rules would be powerful tools because they could be used by less-experienced health care professionals to simplify the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism...
December 3, 2003: JAMA