Solutions

Get detailed explanations to advanced GMAT questions.

Question

Which of the following most logically completes the passage?

Appendicitis (inflammation of the appendix) is potentially fatal; consequently, patients with symptoms strongly suggesting appendicitis almost have their appendix removed. The appropriate surgery is low- risk but performed unnecessarily in about 20 percent of all cases. A newly developed internal scan for appendicitis is highly accurate, producing two misdiagnoses for every 98 correct diagnoses. Clearly, using this test, doctors can largely avoid unnecessary removals of the appendix without, however, performing any fewer necessary ones than before, since

Option A:

the patients who are correctly diagnosed with this test as not having appendicitis invariably have medical conditions that are much less serious than appendicitis

Option B:

the misdiagnoses produced by this test are always instances of attributing appendicitis to someone who does not, in fact, have it

Option C:

all of the patients who are diagnosed with this test as having appendicitis do, in fact, have appendicitis

Option D:

every patient who is diagnosed with this test as having appendicitis has more than one of the symptoms generally associated with appendicitis

Option E:

the only patients who are misdiagnosed using this test are patients who lack one or more of the symptoms that are generally associated with appendicitis

Difficulty Level

Medium

Solution

Option B is the correct answer.

Option Analysis

Question type: Inference based.

Summary of the argument: Since this is an inference question, you will need to jump to the options and find an answer choice that is 100% true based on the facts given.

A) There is no information in the argument that talks about other conditions than appendicitis.

B) Correct Answer

C) This is not true as the argument clearly states that 2 cases are misdiagnosed.

D) We don’t have information about the other symptoms.

E) No information about symptoms.