What is meant by a cut off in a urine drug screen?
A “cut-off” or minimum level for detection is the minimum amount of drug (usually expressed in ng/mL) that must be present in urine to cause a positive presumptive test. Depending on the specific agent and test, lower doses of a prescribed agent may not always result in a positive test. However, a provider can typically ask their laboratory to quantify the test which will give them an exact quantified level within the sample, despite the “cut off” level.
