Quality of thyroid referrals in Saskatchewan.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: A thyroid nodule is a common presentation for thyroid pathology. A low proportion of thyroid nodules harbour malignancy and the investigation of these nodules should be performed in a cost-effective manner. The American Thyroid Association (ATA) has published guidelines which should aid physicians in performing the appropriate investigations. AIM: To determine the proportion of patients referred to thyroid surgeons in Saskatchewan with appropriate pre-referral work-up. METHODS: Data were retrospectively collected from the charts of all new thyroid referrals seen between 8 June 2011 and 8 June 2012 by two thyroid surgeons in the Saskatoon Health Region, Saskatchewan, Canada. Main outcome measures were the presence of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and ultrasound results, and the appropriateness of ultrasound report recommendations in referrals to thyroid surgeons. RESULTS: Recent TSH results were done and sent to the thyroid surgeon in 55.1% of referrals. A recent ultrasound was performed in 92.3% of referrals. Of patients with a high or normal TSH, a radionuclide scan was inappropriately recommended in 11.5% of cases. CONCLUSION: There is room for improvement in pre-referral work-up of patients with thyroid nodules in Saskatchewan, in order to facilitate appropriate clinical decision making in a cost-effective manner.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".