Cargando…
Statistical Methods to Support Difficult Diagnoses
Far too often, one meets patients who went for years or even decades from doctor to doctor without obtaining a valid diagnosis. This brings pain to millions of patients and their families, not to speak of the enormous costs. Often patients cannot tell precisely enough which factors (or combinations...
Autores principales: | , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8305132/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34359382 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics11071300 |
_version_ | 1783727501192724480 |
---|---|
author | Pilz, Guenter F. Weber, Frank Mueller, Werner G. Schaefer, Juergen R. |
author_facet | Pilz, Guenter F. Weber, Frank Mueller, Werner G. Schaefer, Juergen R. |
author_sort | Pilz, Guenter F. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Far too often, one meets patients who went for years or even decades from doctor to doctor without obtaining a valid diagnosis. This brings pain to millions of patients and their families, not to speak of the enormous costs. Often patients cannot tell precisely enough which factors (or combinations thereof) trigger their problems. If conventional methods fail, we propose the use of statistics and algebra to provide doctors much more useful inputs from patients. We use statistical regression for triggering factors of medical problems, and in particular, “balanced incomplete block designs” for factors detection. These methods can supply doctors with much more valuable inputs and can also find combinations of multiple factors through very few tests. In order to show that these methods do work, we briefly describe a case in which these methods helped to solve a 60-year-old problem in a patient and provide some more examples where these methods might be particularly useful. As a conclusion, while regression is used in clinical medicine, it seems to be widely unknown in diagnosing. Statistics and algebra can save the health systems much money, as well as the patients a lot of pain. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8305132 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83051322021-07-25 Statistical Methods to Support Difficult Diagnoses Pilz, Guenter F. Weber, Frank Mueller, Werner G. Schaefer, Juergen R. Diagnostics (Basel) Article Far too often, one meets patients who went for years or even decades from doctor to doctor without obtaining a valid diagnosis. This brings pain to millions of patients and their families, not to speak of the enormous costs. Often patients cannot tell precisely enough which factors (or combinations thereof) trigger their problems. If conventional methods fail, we propose the use of statistics and algebra to provide doctors much more useful inputs from patients. We use statistical regression for triggering factors of medical problems, and in particular, “balanced incomplete block designs” for factors detection. These methods can supply doctors with much more valuable inputs and can also find combinations of multiple factors through very few tests. In order to show that these methods do work, we briefly describe a case in which these methods helped to solve a 60-year-old problem in a patient and provide some more examples where these methods might be particularly useful. As a conclusion, while regression is used in clinical medicine, it seems to be widely unknown in diagnosing. Statistics and algebra can save the health systems much money, as well as the patients a lot of pain. MDPI 2021-07-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8305132/ /pubmed/34359382 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics11071300 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Pilz, Guenter F. Weber, Frank Mueller, Werner G. Schaefer, Juergen R. Statistical Methods to Support Difficult Diagnoses |
title | Statistical Methods to Support Difficult Diagnoses |
title_full | Statistical Methods to Support Difficult Diagnoses |
title_fullStr | Statistical Methods to Support Difficult Diagnoses |
title_full_unstemmed | Statistical Methods to Support Difficult Diagnoses |
title_short | Statistical Methods to Support Difficult Diagnoses |
title_sort | statistical methods to support difficult diagnoses |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8305132/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34359382 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics11071300 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT pilzguenterf statisticalmethodstosupportdifficultdiagnoses AT weberfrank statisticalmethodstosupportdifficultdiagnoses AT muellerwernerg statisticalmethodstosupportdifficultdiagnoses AT schaeferjuergenr statisticalmethodstosupportdifficultdiagnoses |