ArticleJournal of clinical medicine2020
Trends and Between-Physician Variation in Laboratory Testing: A Retrospective Longitudinal Study in General Practice.
Article in Journal of clinical medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Out-of-hours C-reactive protein point-of-care testing and its association with long-term healthcare-seeking.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2026Article
- Ferritin Cutoffs and Diagnosis of Iron Deficiency in Primary Care.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- The Copenhagen Primary Care Laboratory (CopLab) Database.Clinical epidemiology · 2024Article
- Ambient temperature and kidney function in primary care patients.Journal of nephrology · 2024Article
- Vitamin D Metabolites: Analytical Challenges and Clinical Relevance.Calcified tissue international · 2023Review
- The Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Diagnosis and Classification of Thyroid Nodules: An Update.Cancers · 2023Review
- The Role of Point-of-Care C-Reactive Protein Testing in Antibiotic Prescribing for Respiratory Tract Infections: A Survey among Swiss General Practitioners.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Prescription Rates, Polypharmacy and Prescriber Variability in Swiss General Practice-A Cross-Sectional Database Study.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2022Article
- Testing and Prescribing Vitamin B12 in Swiss General Practice: A Survey among Physicians.Nutrients · 2021Article
- Deep into Laboratory: An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Recommend Laboratory Tests.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Trends in Micronutrient Laboratory Testing in Switzerland: A 7-Year Retrospective Analysis of Healthcare Claims Data.International journal of general medicine · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Laboratory tests are frequently ordered by general practitioners (GPs), but little is known about time trends and between-GP variation of their use. In this retrospective longitudinal study, we analyzed over six million consultations by Swiss GPs during the decade 2009-2018. For 15 commonly used test types, we defined specific laboratory testing rates (sLTR) as the percentage of consultations involving corresponding laboratory testing requests. Patient age- and sex-adjusted time trends of sLTR were modeled with mixed-effect logistic regression accounting for clustering of patients within GPs. We quantified between-GP variation by means of intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). Nine out of the 15 laboratory test types considered showed significant temporal increases, most eminently vitamin D (ten-year odds ratio (OR) 1.88, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.71-2.06) and glycated hemoglobin (ten-year OR 1.87, 95% CI 1.82-1.92). Test types both subject to substantial increase and high between-GP variation of sLTR were vitamin D (ICC 0.075), glycated hemoglobin (ICC 0.101), C-reactive protein (ICC 0.202), and vitamin B12 (ICC 0.166). Increasing testing frequencies and large between-GP variation of specific test type use pointed at inconsistencies of medical practice and potential overuse.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.