[Description and evaluation of diagnostic measures in German-language clinical journals].

A literature study was performed in four German-language medical journals of 1985 and 1986 on the methodology of published diagnostic studies. A total of 93 papers was investigated. The results showed that fundamental requirements for the evaluation of diagnostic tests, such as blindness of judgement, were met only in 5% of the papers. In more than half of the publications the use of test parameters (sensitivity, specificity) was insufficient and the relationship between pretest and posttest probability was considered only in isolated cases. It is concluded that the methodologic criteria for the evaluation of diagnostic tests do not seem to be widely known and that a significant improvement is desirable.