In health-related fields, a reference range or reference interval usually describes the variations of a measurement or value in healthy individuals. It is a basis for a physician or other health professional to interpret a set of results for a particular patient.
The standard definition of a reference range (usually referred to if not otherwise specified) basically originates in what is most prevalent in a reference group taken from the population. However, there are also optimal health ranges that are those that appear to have the optimal health impact on people.
Read more about Reference Range: Standard Definition, Optimal Health Range, One-sided Cut-off Values, General Drawbacks, Examples
Famous quotes containing the words reference and/or range:
“Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The Canadians of those days, at least, possessed a roving spirit of adventure which carried them further, in exposure to hardship and danger, than ever the New England colonist went, and led them, though not to clear and colonize the wilderness, yet to range over it as coureurs de bois, or runners of the woods, or, as Hontan prefers to call them, coureurs de risques, runners of risks; to say nothing of their enterprising priesthood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)