Summary
Objectives:
Predicting the outcome of seriously ill patients is a challenging problem for clinicians.
Methods:
One alternative to clinical trials is to analyse existing patient data in an attempt
to predict the several outcomes, and to suggest therapies. In this paper we use decision
tree techniques to predict the outcome of head injury patients. The work is based
on patient data from the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary which contains both background
(demographic) data and temporal (physiological) data.
Results:
The focus of this paper is the discussion of the anomalous cases in the decision
trees with the domain experts (the clinicians).
Conclusions:
These analyses led to the detection of several situations where both the data analysis
and patient data collection should be enhanced, which in turn should lead to improved
patient care.
Keywords
Anomalies - Decision Tree Analysis - Demographic Data - Traumatic Brain Injuries -
Temporal/Physiological Data
