Integrating Multiple Clinical Tests to Increase Predictive Power
Clinical tests provide information that can be used by statistical methods to ma
Clinical tests provide information that can be used by statistical methods to make patient outcome predictions. Outcomes are risk of disease, existence of disease, and prognosis. In this chapter we define and describe predictive factors and clinical prediction and explain how combining predictive factors can increase predictive accuracy, describe the advantages and disadvantages of commonly used statistical methods, and recommend an approach to the reporting of predictive factor research.