After the COVID-19 outbreak worldwide, we will sooner or later encounter trauma patients with COVID-19 in thedeveloping countries. It is a challenging decision-making process for an orthopedic surgeon to provide the patients withthe best practice in the crisis. Here we discuss the issue in terms of clinical severity of COVID-19 pneumonia, priorityof orthopedic surgical trauma ...

Evidence-based medicine has placed a general priority on knowledge gained from clinical research for clinical decision making. However, knowledge derived from empiric, population-based research, while valued for its ability to limit bias, is not directly applicable to the care of individual patients. The gap between clinical research and individual patient care centers on the fact that empiric ...

Numerical simulations are playing an important role in solving complex problems and have the potential to revolutionize medical decision making and treatment strategy. Musculoskeletal conditions cost the U.S. economy alone over $849 billion per year (7.7% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product) and place great demands on healthcare systems worldwide [1]. This area could greatly benefit from computa...

BACKGROUND Up to now it has not been systematically investigated in which kind of clinical situations a consultation style based on shared decision making (SDM) is preferred by patients and physicians. We suggest the factorial survey design to address this problem.This method, which so far has hardly been used in health service research, allows to vary relevant factors describing clinical situa...

In this chapter, we discuss mathematical methods to analyze problems involving uncertainty. Such problems arise naturally in many fields including economics, finance, biology, medical decision making and operations research. Probability and stochastic processes are useful mathematical tools for that purpose. This article explains useful notions of probability and stochastic processes with typic...

A multiperson decision making problem, where the information about the alternatives provided by the experts can be presented by means of diierent preference representation structures (preference orderings, utility functions and multiplicative preference relations) is studied. Assuming the multiplicative preference relation as the uniform element of the preference representation, a multiplicativ...

Drawing our attention these days as a possible answer to this question, evidence-based dentistry seeks to apply the best available evidence gained from the scientific method to medical decision making. To make a good decision, the strength of evidence is assessed. Specifically, randomized controlled trial, systematic review, and meta-analysis are considered the highest level of evidence; cohort...

Cost-effectiveness analysis suggests that a society should allocate its health care budget in order to achieve the greatest total health for its budget. However, in ‘rescue’ cases, where an individual’s life is in immediate peril, reasoning in terms of cost-effectiveness can appear inhumane. Hence considerations of cost-effectiveness and of rescue appear to be in tension. However, by attending ...

Scientists develop a vaccine to prevent a disease, collaborate ith manufacturers to establish its safety and efficacy and bring t to scale, and manufacturers then submit it for licensure by the ood and Drug Administration. Only then do federal public health uthorities, guided by the scientific evidence and expert opinion, ormulate recommendations for its use. In turn, such recommenations then s...