Decision in Medicine

This issue is essentially devoted to decision making in medicine. Analysis of the decision process is far from a new idea, but perhaps it is an idea whose time has come for those who deal with clinical medicine, whether as planners or as practitioners.In 1971, Dr. Lee Lusted, who had pioneered in medical decision making1 and had written a book on the subject,2 published in the Journal an article entitled "Decision-Making Studies in Patient Management."3 In this account, Lusted examined how an observer, given a certain signal, (e.g., the results of a test), uses that signal to arrive at . . .