Literature scan yielded 34 articles with 4265 cases and 90 unique signs, symptoms and confirmatory features (frequency data068 and continuous data022) for SARS. After combining the data and assigning the assumptions, there were 18 representative, 63 conditionally independent and 9 confirmatory features. Applying the BTA methodology for SARS, the positive predicted value, negative predicted value, sensitivity, specificity and accuracy based on 10-fold cross-validation were 55.7%, 94.6%, 74.8%, 88.1% and 85.8%, respectively. An ROC curve analysis revealed an area under the curve of 0.929. The main features contributing toward identifying the positive SARS cases were fever, chills/rigors, nonproductive cough, fatigue/ malaise/lethargy and myalgias. The identified features were in agreement with clinicians' judgment.