I keep a little, ever-expanding note on my phone where I jot down little morsels of goodness that I pick up while listening to or reading one of the many excellent sites/podcasts in the useful resource section.
I’ll try and transfer them here for your enlightenment.
In case you didn’t already see Michelle Lin’s great PV card on osteomyelitis in ulcers, here are some tips
- diabetic with an ulcer has a pre-test probability of 15%
- feeling bone with a probe has one of the higher LR (7.2)
- ESR appears to have a use with a LR of 11 if >70mm/hr. Unfortunately lots will have ESR <70 and that won’t help you
- a +ve MRI had only an LR of 3.8 but did seem to be of some use in ruling it out
Note – to properly use an LR you need the Bayes nomogram but who has time for that… In general a LR above 10 is good for ruling things in and an LR of less than 0.1 is good at ruling it out.
UPDATE – Check out Graham Walker’s risk calculator at the NNT.com. Lovely little slider-bars to work out the numbers proper
Try my dynamic risk calculator — fast, easy version of the Bayes nomogram!
http://www.thennt.com/risk-calculator/