Disease Risk Curves

Risk assessment and receiver operating characteristic curves.

Risk assessment is now regarded as a necessary competence in psychiatry. The area under the curve (AUC) statistic of the receiver operating characteristic curve is increasingly offered as the main evidence for accuracy of risk assessment instruments. But, even a highly statistically significant AUC is of limited value in clinical practice.

On Risk Preferences and Curvilinear Utility Curves

Kuznar’s (CA 42:432–40) proposed relationship between social status (wealth), risk preference, and utility bears further scrutiny. The author proposes “that there will be a general curvilinear relationship between wealth and risk sensitivity in which the poor and the wealthy will prefer risky prospects whereas those with more moderate wealth will be risk-averse” (p. 437). He attempts to clarify...

Dye dilution curves in congenital heart disease.

The need for methods capable of detecting and estimating roughly the size of congenital cardiac defects has increased with the recent rapid developments in cardiac surgery. The application of dye dilution technique to the study of these patients is largely due to the extensive work of Wood and his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic since 1950. However, although the development of these techniques re...

Prevention of Heart Disease by Controlling Risk Factors

For a long period of time some different hypothesis have been published about arteriosclerosis but none of them has discovered the pathogenesis and effective treat­ment of this entity. By elemination of risk factors it is not clear that the disease process stops or reverses. Pre­ventiona and treatment of risk factors should start before manifestation of arteriosclerosis sympthoms. The result of...

Anthropometric Measures and the Risk of Coronary Artery Disease