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W Steinbach

Publications and source records attributed to W Steinbach.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

[Effectiveness of various forms of therapy in chronic cardiovascular diseases--a vector analysis of the transition probabilities of degrees of severity].

The present findings result from a check of probationers representative for approx. 280,000 inhabitants of defined territories, who had been designated as suspects of heart and vessel disease on grounds of X-ray-morphological criterions (classification by Richter). Those about 3,000 suspects, subdivided into 3 comparable patient groups A, B and C, underwent different regimes of treatment of outpatient medical practice after standardized and noninvasive diagnostics in a follow-up during 5 years and had been valued by means of a problem-specific grading. The comparative analysis about the distribution of severe degrees concerning hypertension and coronary heart disease after the conclusion of the intervention showed significant differences concerning the results of treatment to the credit of the patient group A (treated by specialists) contrary to the patient group B (treated by family doctors) and patient group C (principle of announcing the patients themselves). Also the patient group B showed significantly better results of therapy compared with the patient group C. In addition to the concluding rating the estimation of yearly transition of severe degrees gave an insight into the therapeutical decision of the person who looks after as well as the different distribution of severe degrees of special heart diseases in dependence on the starting severe degree in the special period of intervention conditioned on the therapy. The results gain exceptional importance for practice on the grounds of methodics of the study-automatable classification of dv-thorax-X-ray pictures, problem-specific grading of noninvasive, simple parameters, variants of therapy in dependence on the graduated system of medical care.

Coronary Disease

[Random sample size in ROC analyses].

ROC analysis has proved useful in assessing diagnostic efficiency. Large x-ray film series of thoracic images intended for cardiovascular diagnosis were used for studying diagnostic efficiency in relation to random sample size. Exploration of random samples from two classes of findings requiring diagnostic differentiation, with the same number of x-ray films in each class, showed satisfactory convergence between the radiologists' rating and the ROC curve if the size of the random sample groups was about 200 images each or larger. The smaller the random sample size (less than 200 images), the greater the scatter of the rating performance. In another series the rating ability of experienced radiologists was compared with that of a semi-automatic classificator. The semi-automatic classificator attained almost the same performance index as the low-performance evaluator.

Decision Theory