What is the interaction of these baseline characteristics with treatment received and which characteristic best identifies the most efficacious treatment for an individual patient?
An optimal strategy of assigning patients to the most appropriate therapy would tend to equalize the power of prognostic variables in the total population of patients, thereby negating treatment-related differences observed for individual variables. If treatment selection could be perfect, the relative power of each prognostic variable would converge on that defined only by its biologic importance. Most characteristics which identify a high risk of medical treatment in patients with coronary disease also identify patients with increased risk of either angioplasty or bypass surgery. Coronary anatomy is the single exception to this generalization. Therefore, this baseline characteristic is most useful for identifying the most effective treatment for an individual patient. More diffuse or severe coronary atherosclerosis is associated with increased mortality in medically-treated patients, in contrast to only minimal increase in mortality risk in surgically-treated patients. Patients treat
Related Questions
- What characteristics of coronary anatomy best define prognosis, and what is the interrelationship of treatment received and outcome as a function of extensiveness of coronary artery disease?
- Do baseline client characteristics predict the therapeutic alliance in the treatment of schizophrenia?
- Do baseline characteristics predict response to treatment for low back pain?
