ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the properties of clinical measurements and their distributions within animal populations. It aims to develop criteria by which abnormal values for clinical measurements are recognized, including normal reference ranges. Practitioners are continually collecting, categorizing, and quantifying biological data about their patients. In the hospital environment, these data are categorized as patient history, clinical signs, and screening/definitive tests. Clinical data are of three types: nominal, ordinal, or interval. Clinical substage is frequently reported to be of prognostic value in dogs with lymphoma, yet formal criteria for defining this parameter are review the properties of clinical measurements and their distributions within animal populations. The coefficient of variation (CV) is frequently used to express the precision of clinical measurements. The CV is equal to the standard deviation of a set of measurements divided by their mean and is usually expressed as a percentage.
