Recent literature has explored the value of repeat testing of alert or critical laboratory test results, as illustrated in the article by Toll et al. Using a large data set for selected tests, that article makes the point that repeat testing is rarely of value. All too often, laboratories retest results that are considered "critical" because of a purely emotional desire to avoid misleading a clinician into taking an action on that result, even though there is no scientific basis for retesting. The basic problem with such studies is an intrinsic bias in only retesting critical values to detect false-positive (a error) results. Because none of the noncritical specimens were retested to detect false-negative results, the beta error is not evaluated. In other words, perhaps the patient really had a critical test result, but it was falsely noncritical.
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