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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 May 20.
Published in final edited form as: Stat Med. 2012 Sep 13;32(11):1865–1876. doi: 10.1002/sim.5601

Figure 5. Net benefit against plotted against threshold probability for a molecular marker of prostate cancer, with an invasive diagnostic test conditional upon the marker findings.

Figure 5

Thick grey line: biopsy all men. Thick black line: biopsy no men. Thin black line: biopsy if HK test positive. Thin grey line: biopsy if HK test positive or TRUS following a negative HK test is positive, assuming a physician would do not more than 10 TRUS to find one cancer (left panel); a physician would do no more than 20 TRUS to find one cancer (center panel); a physician would do no more than 50 TRUS to find one cancer (right panel). Even if TRUS is considered of relatively little disbenefit, its use cannot be justified for what would appear to be the clinically sensible strategy of only applying TRUS where HK is negative.