Decision-Making Studies in Patient Management

Abstract Decision analysis provides a method to help the physician choose a course of action consistent with his personal judgments, to relate his preferences to costs, and to act more systematically. Decision analysis uses personal probabilities and deals with the relation of values and costs of patient management procedures. The physician is able to introduce intuitive judgments directly into the decision problem by using a numerical scale to express his uncertainty about a symptom or a diagnosis. His preference for consequences of diagnoses and treatments can be numerically scaled as utility values. Signal-detection theory has been used to develop performance criteria for radiologists' assistants and radiologic systems. The essential feature of the analysis, an operating characteristic curve, is a means for separating the detectability of a signal, a sensory process, from all other factors involved in the decision process.