Originally Posted by hickory
Thanks, Ecupirate87. I'm beginning to feel the same way, but I'll elaborate on that in another post here in a sec.
For now, question for BURNT: I've done a lot of reading today but this statement from you still throws me: "even though their cutoffs numerically differ, a 50 ng assay screen is functionally equivalent to the 15 ng GC/MS."
Not sure I follow since I thought ng's were the unit of measurement that a test looked for, ie, if you're taking a 15ng test then you need to be at 14 or less to avoid detection, whereas if you're taking a 50ng test, you only need to be at 49ng's to avoid a positive. Is that not the case? Those two seem very different to me and my fear is that even as I test at home over and over and get negatives, that it may be only because I'm somewhere between 15-49 ng's (ie, not truly "clean"). And if that's the case, the wrong kinda test -- one testing down to 15ng's would blow me out of the water, right?
Seems like your saying it's standard for initial screens (aka: assay screen) to test only to detect > 50ng's and only if you fail that do they look harder and test to 15 ng's via the GC/MS but that other than that, both tests are functionally/procedurally the same?