Detailed resource showing how to best make medical decisions while incorporating clinical practice guidelines and decision support systems
Medical Decision Making provides clinicians with a powerful framework for helping patients make decisions that increase the likelihood that they will have the outcomes that are most consistent with their preferences. The text provides a thorough understanding of the key decision-making infrastructure of clinical practice and explains the principles of medical decision making for both individual patients and the wider healthcare arena. It shows how to make the best clinical decisions based on the available evidence and how to use clinical guidelines and decision support systems in electronic medical records to shape practice guidelines and policies.
This newly revised and updated Third Edition includes updates throughout the text, especially concerning new developments in big data. Theory on writing guidelines is included as a practical tool for practitioners in the field.
Written by three distinguished and highly qualified authors, Medical Decision Making includes information on:
- How to be consider possible causes of a patient’s problems, and how to characterize information gathered during medical interviews and physical examinations
- Bayes’ theorem, covering its assumption, using it to interpret a sequence of tests, and using it when many diseases are under consideration
- How to describe test results (abnormal and normal, positive and negative), and measuring a test’s capability to reveal the patient’s true state
- Decisions trees, selecting a decision maker, quantifying uncertainty, expected value calculations, and sensitivity analysis
Medical Decision Making is a valuable resource for a wide range of general practitioners and clinicians, as well as medical trainees at intermediate and advanced levels, who wish to fully understand and apply decision modeling, enhance their practice, and improve patient outcomes.
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 How may I be thorough yet efficient when considering the possible causes of my patient's problems?
1.2 How may I be thorough yet efficient when considering the possible causes of my patient's problems?
1.3 How do I select the appropriate diagnostic test?
1.4 How do I choose among several risky treatment alternatives?
CHAPTER 2. DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS
2.1 An introduction
2.2 How clinicians make a diagnosis
2.3 The principles of hypothesis-driven differential diagnosis
2.4 An illustrative example
Bibliography
CHAPTER 3. PROBABILITY: QUANTIFYING UNCERTAINTY
3.1 Uncertainty and probability in medicine
3.2 How to determine a probability
3.3 Sources of error in using personal experience to estimate probability
3.4 The role for empirical evidence in understanding uncertainty
Bibliography
CHAPTER 4. INTERPRETING NEW INFORMATION: BAYES’ THEOREM
4.1 Conditional probability defined
4.2 Bayes' theorem
4.3 Odds ratio form of Bayes' theorem
4.4 Lessons to be learned from Bayes' theorem
4.5 The assumptions of Bayes’ theorem
4.6 Using Bayes' theorem to interpret a sequence of tests
4.7 Using Bayes' theorem when many diseases are under consideration
Bibliography
CHAPTER 5. MEASURING THE ACCURACY OF CLINICAL FINDINGS
5.1 A language to describe test results
5.2 Measuring a test’s capability to reveal the patient’s true state
5.3 How to measure test performance: a hypothetical case
5.4 Pitfalls of predictive value
5.5 Sources of bias in estimates of test performance and how to avoid them
5.6 How to adjust for bias in measuring sensitivity and specificity
5.7 When to be concerned about inaccurate measures of test performance
5.8 Expressing test results as continuous variables: the ROC curve
5.9 Combining data from several studies of test performance
Bibliography
CHAPTER 6. DECISION TREES – REPRESENTING THE STRUCTURE OF A DECISION PROBLEM.
6.1 Key concepts and terminology
6.2 Measuring a test’s capability to reveal the patient’s true state
6.3 Constructing the decision tree for a medical decision problem
Epilogue
Bibliography
CHAPTER 7 DECISION TREE ANALYSIS
7.1 Folding-back operation
7.2 Sensitivity analysis
Epilogue
Bibliography
CHAPTER 8 OUTCOME UTILITY – REPRESENTING RISK ATTITUDES
8.1 What are risk attitudes?
8.2 Demonstration of risk attitudes in a medical context
8.3 General observations about outcome utilities
8.4 Determining outcome utilities – Underlying concepts
Epilogue
Bibliography
CHAPTER 9 OUTCOME UTILITIES – CLINICAL APPLICATIONS
9.1 A parametric model for outcome utilities
9.2 Incorporating risk attitudes into clinical policies
9.3 Helping patients communicate their preferences
CHAPTER 10 OUTCOME UTILITIES – ADJUSTING FOR THE QUALITY OF LIFE
10.1 Example – Why the quality of life matters.
10.2 Quality-lifetime tradeoff models
10.3 Quality-survival tradeoff models
10.4 What does it all mean? – An extended example
Epilogue
Bibliography
CHAPTER 11 SURVIVAL MODELS – REPRESENTING UNCERTAINTY ABOUT THE LENGTH OF LIFE
11.1 Survival model basics
11.2 Medical example – Survival after breast cancer recurrence
11.3 Exponential Survival Model
11.4 Actuarial survival models
Epilogue
Bibliography
CHAPTER 12 Markov Models –Structure
12.1 Markov model basics
12.2 Determining transition probabilities
12.3 Markov model analysis – An overview
Epilogue
Bibliography
CHAPTER 13 SELECTION AND INTERPRETATION OF DIAGNOSTIC TESTS
13.1 Four principles of decision making
13.2 The threshold probability for treatment
13.3 Threshold probabilities for testing
13.4 Clinical application of the threshold model of decision making
13.5 Accounting for the disutility of undergoing a test
13.6 Sensitivity analysis
13.7 Decision curves analysis
CHAPTER 14 MEDICAL DECISION ANALYSIS IN PRACTICE: ADVANCED METHODS
11.1 An overview of advanced modeling techniques
11.2 Use of medical decision-making concepts to analyze a policy problem:
the cost-effectiveness of screening for HIV
11.3 Use of medical decision-making concepts to analyze a clinical diagnostic
problem: strategies to diagnose tumors in the lung
11.4 Calibration and validation of decision models
11.5 Use of complex models for individual-patient decision making
CHAPTER 15 COST-EFFECTIVENESS ANALYSIS
15.1 The clinician’s conflicting roles: patient advocate, member of society, and entrepreneur
15.2 Cost-effectiveness analysis: a method for comparing management strategies
15.3 Cost-benefit analysis: a method for measuring the net benefit of medical services
15.4 Methodological best practices for cost-effectiveness analysis
15.5 Reference case for cost-effectiveness analysis
15.6 Impact inventory for cataloguing consequences
15.7 Measuring the health effects of medical care
15.8 Measuring the costs of medical care
15.9 Interpretation of cost-effectiveness analysis and use in decision making
15.10 Limitations of cost-effectiveness analysis
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