Eric Chavez

Med Inf 406 Session 3 Decision Tree Assignment

Eric Chavez

Med Inf 406 Session 3 Decision Tree Assignment

Patient presents with symptoms. The decision point is to treat with the drug or do not treat with drug.
If you treat with the drug there is a 0.5 probability of hearing loss. If you have hearing loss there is a 0.3
probability of getting the disease with the drug and a 0.7 probability of not getting the disease with the drug. If you
get the disease there is 0.8 probability of blindness and 0.2 probability of no blindness. The utility of taking the drug,
getting hearing loss and getting blindness is 0.1. The utility of taking the drug, getting hearing loss, and not getting
blindness is 0.6. The utility of taking the drug, getting hearing loss, and not getting disease (and no blindness) is 0.6.
If you treat with the drug there is a 0.5 probability of not getting hearing loss there is a 0.3 probability of
getting the disease. You still have a 0.3 probability of getting the disease and 0.7 probability of not getting the
disease. If you get the disease there is 0.8 probability of blindness and 0.2 probability of no blindness. The utility of
taking the drug, not getting hearing loss, and getting blindness is 0.3. The utility of taking the drug, not getting
hearing loss, not getting disease, and not getting blindness is 1.0. The utility of taking the drug, not getting hearing
loss, and not getting disease is 1.0.
If you do not treat with the drug there is a 0.75 probability of getting the disease. If you get the disease
there is 0.8 probability of getting blindness and 0.2 probability of not getting blindness. The utility of not taking the
drug, getting disease, and getting blindness is 0.3. The utility of not taking the drug, getting the disease, and not
getting blindness is 1.0.
If you do not treat with the drug there is a 0.25 probability of not getting the disease. The utility of not
taking the drug and not getting the disease (and not getting blindness) is 1.0.
Working from right to left we calculate the value for each of the branches. This is done by taking the
utility at the end of each branch and multiplying it by the probability of that branch. The values at the two ends of a
node are then summed. These summed values make up the utility of the branch further to the left. Then this utility
number is multiplied by the probability at that branch. This process is repeated further and further to the right until
we arrive at the value of each branch off the decision point.
For this decision tree the value of treating with the drug is 0.656 which is larger than the value of not
treating with the drug which is 0.58. Therefore the decision should be to treat with the drug.