Map the assay
Name the test, the specimen, the usual units, and the panel it belongs to. Nothing is written until that map is clean.
How the library is made
Every page on Decode My Report should be able to sit beside a printed slip without embarrassing either document. This is the method we use to get there.
Name the test, the specimen, the usual units, and the panel it belongs to. Nothing is written until that map is clean.
Primary references first: laboratory manuals, professional society statements, method notes, and standard textbooks.
English a person can use. Ranges treated as fences. Neighbouring markers named so a single flag is never left alone.
Clinical review where the page needs it. A visible reviewed-on date. A path to correct what later proves thin.
Standard of work
The reader already has numbers. What they lack is vocabulary, unit sense, and a way to see which lines on the slip belong together. The editorial job is to supply that — without turning a library into a clinic.
Pages follow the same four rules published on our About page: name the assay, place the range as a fence, read in patterns, and leave the decision in the room. If a draft violates one of those rules, it does not publish.
We do not write to frighten, to sell a supplement, or to close a diagnosis from a webpage. Alarm is a failure of tone. Vagueness is a failure of craft.
Sources we prefer
Sources we treat with care
On the page
A finished marker or panel page is expected to carry, at minimum: the common names and abbreviations, the specimen, the units you are likely to meet, what the test is for, how the range should be read, what commonly raises or lowers the value, which tests sit beside it, and a short list of questions worth taking to a clinician.
Where a method difference changes the meaning — calculated LDL versus direct, creatinine with or without race coefficients, HbA1c that can mislead in certain anemias — the page must say so in the body, not only in a footnote.
Each page should show when it was last reviewed. If that date is missing, the page is unfinished.
Review
Clinical review is for the medicine. Editorial review is for the sentence.A reviewer checks that the physiology is not wrong, that ranges are not presented as verdicts, and that urgent situations are pointed toward care rather than toward a longer article. An editor checks that the English is exact, that neighbouring tests are linked, and that the page does not promise what a website cannot do. Both passes are required before a core test page is marked reviewed.
After publication
Pages are reopened when guidelines change, when a method note we relied on is withdrawn, when a reader shows a genuine error, or when a neighbouring test is added and the pattern on the original page must be widened.
Corrections that change meaning are dated. Small wording repairs are not announced as new science. If a page is retired, it is redirected or marked withdrawn rather than left to rank as if it were current.
To report an error, write to [email protected] with the page URL, the line that is wrong, and the source you believe we missed. We read those notes. We do not debate diagnoses by inbox.
Independence
If the site ever carries advertising, affiliates, or sponsored tools, those relationships will be labelled where they appear. They will not decide whether a marker is described as high, low, or worth repeating. A product mention is never a substitute for the source list.
No page should exist only because a keyword is valuable. The test must earn its place on a real slip.
This process sits beside our Medical Disclaimer, Terms, and About pages. The disclaimer is the boundary. This page is the craft inside that boundary.
From method to shelf
The process is the promise. The panels are the work.
Browse all tests