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. 2007 Dec 20;7:356. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-7-356

Table 2.

Performance of Culture, PCR dot-blot and Clinical suspicion tests, individually and associated, in 151 smear negative PTB suspects

Table 2A. Laboratory results and Performance of methods
All Groupa
N = 151
Non previously TB treated Groupb
N = 98

TB
N = 43
Non-TB
N = 108
TB
N = 36
Non-TB
N = 62

Culture Positive 30 0 27 0
Negative 13 108 9 62

SE SP PPV NPV SE SP PPV NPV

70% 100% 100 89 75% 100% 100 87

PCR dot-blot Positive 28 18 25 9
Negative 15 90 11 53

SE SP PPV NPV SE SP PPV NPV

65% 83% 61 86 69% 85% 73 83

High PP Positive 31 15 26 4
Negative 12 93 10 58

SE SP PPV NPV SE SP PPV NPV

72% 86% 67 88 72% 93% 87 85

Intermediate PP Positive 6 19 6 6
Negative 37 89 30 56

SE SP PPV NPV SE SP PPV NPV

14% 82% 24 71 17% 90% 50 65

Low PP Positive 6 74 4 52
Negative 37 34 32 10

SE SP PPV NPV SE SP PPV NPV

14% 31% 7.5 48 11% 16% 7.1 24

Table 2B. Performance of methods used in parallel

Performance of PCR dot-blot in parallel with High Clinical Suspicion SE SP PPV NPV SE SP PPV NPV
90% 71% 75 88 91% 79% 81 90

Performance of PCR dot-blot in parallel with Intermediate Clinical Suspicion SE SP PPV NPV SE SP PPV NPV

70% 68% 68 70 74% 77% 75 76

Performance of PCR dot-blot in parallel with Low Clinical Suspicion SE SP PPV NPV SE SP PPV NPV

26% 25% 47 47 26% 14% 45 34

SE: Sensitivity, SP: Specificity, PPV: Positive Predictive Value, NPV: Negative Predictive Value, PP: pretest probability (clinical suspicion).

a: All group.

b: Non previously TB treated group patients