This simple prognostic index can predict the survival of patients treated with TACE and can therefore be used to decide which patients with unresectable HCC should receive this therapy. TACE should not be administered to patients with one or more positive prognostic factors. Copyright 2000 American Cancer Society. As a specific example the construction of a sequential decision procedure to determine if a patient was a high risk patient or not is used. The advantages of the procedure are demonstrated by a surgical problem of risk prediction from a clinical study on liver resection and transplantation.
Data are available pre, peri- and postoperative, and form the basis of three clinical scores.
The quality of the procedure is measured in terms of sensitivity and specificity, and the procedure will be optimized in a way, that a priori given error constraints will be maintained. A decision theoretic model is introduced and a robust procedure is developed. The approach is feasible for any fixed number of continuous clinical test scores obtained in a time sequence. Two sets of scores derived form linear discriminant analysis and artificial neural networks are compared. To present epidemiologic profile of this supposedly rare condition, its diagnostic management and the results of surgical treatment in a population of the mediterranean border.