Normal Values—An Obsolete Term

Normal Values— An Obsolete Term Historically the term normal values was frequently used to refer to medical data used for purpose of comparison. However, the use of the term often leads to confusion because the word normal has several different connota-tions. For example, three medically important but very different meanings of normal are given in the foUowmg  

Clinical Sense The term normal is also often used to indicate that values show the absence of certain diseases or the absence of risks for the development of diseases. In this sense, a normal value is considered as a sign of health. Better descriptive terms for such values are healthy, nonpathological, or harmless.  

Because of the confusion resulting from the different meanings of normal, the term normal values is now considered obsolete and should not be used. 

To prevent the ambiguities inherent in the term normal values, the concept of reference values was introduced and implemented in the 1980s, At first glance, the substitution of reference values for normal values appears to be unimportant, but on closer scrutiny this change in nomenclature is an important step toward establishing a scientific basis for clinical interpretation of laboratory data.  

---