A decision-theoretic network approach to treatment management and prognosis

Medical patient management is a complicated process, usually involving a large amount of, possibly uncertain, information. Clinicians may, therefore, require some form of decision support to deal with complicated situations; assistance in exploring various clinical questions, e.g., concerning prognosis and optimal treatment, may be valuable in this respect. Decision-theoretic expert systems provide a suitable framework for such assistance due to the flexibility of the underlying formalisms, with inherent potentials of knowledge reuse. In this paper, the development of a decision-theoretic model of non-Hodgkin lymphoma of the stomach is described, and examined for its clinical usefulness. Central to the model is a probabilistic network that offers an explicit representation of the uncertainties underlying the decision-making process.