This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

James J. Burke II; Herman P. Parramore; Paul Fischer, MD
Medical College of Georgia Augusta

JAMA. 1988;259(4):518.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—The recent letter by Record and Record¹ describing a cholesterol screening program in Maine demonstrates a widespread misunderstanding about testing. Of the 1388 persons who were screened with on-site, finger-prick measurements of cholesterol level, 52% were considered to have values "above goal." Ten percent of these above-goal patients returned for followup cholesterol level testing after dietary counseling. Thirty-two of these 74 patients had reduced their cholesterol level by an average of 7%. The authors conclude that this reduction may translate into a 14% reduction in cardiovascular disease risk.

When a group of patients is classified according to measurements, the groups that lie at either of the extremes can be subject to the phenomenon of "regression to the mean" on remeasurement. When remeasured, the mean of the extreme values will move closer to the initial mean of the total population. Much of the observed change noted in . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?