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Decision Analytic Techniques

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Difficult Decisions in Thoracic Surgery

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Abstract

Over the last decades, growth in biomedical and associated social sciences research has resulted in the accumulation of a large body of new and more reliable information on human health.1 This research has certainly played a key role in the unprecedented improvement of health throughout the world. It has also complicated decision making, both at the individual and at the policy level, by presenting clinicians and policy makers with an increasing number of choices of medical technologies and strategies for the management of a given medical situation. A fundamental concern in medical decision making is how to synthesize information about the effect of a medical intervention on patients with specific characteristics. An additional challenge, relevant mostly to clinical decision making, involves integrating population level evidence about outcomes with patient-level values for these outcomes in order to produce individualized care. Such individualized decisions for patients demand a systematic approach to sort through the evidence and to incorporate patients’ and their family members’ values and preferences into the decision making processes.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Caleb G. Alexander and William Dale at the University of Chicago for helpful comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Anirban Basu

  2. Lake Tanganyika Floating Health Clinic, Chicago, IL, USA

    Amy Lehman (Founder and Director)

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  1. Anirban Basu
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  2. Amy Lehman
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Surgery, Mail Code 5035, University of Chicago, S. Maryland Avenue 5841, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA

    Mark K. Ferguson

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Basu, A., Lehman, A. (2011). Decision Analytic Techniques. In: Ferguson, M. (eds) Difficult Decisions in Thoracic Surgery. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-492-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-492-0_3

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  • Print ISBN: 978-1-84996-364-0

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