Decision trees – representing the structure of a decision problem
Harold C. Sox, Michael C. Higgins, Douglas K Owens, Gillian Sanders Schmidler · Medical Decision Making · 2024
Decision analysis often uses the trees described in this chapter to represent these interactions. The focus of the chapter is the structure of decision trees. The branches emanating from a decision node correspond to the alternatives available for the choice represented by the node. The branches emanating from a chance node correspond to the possible values for the corresponding patient condition, test result, or treatment effect. The introduction of decision analysis to the medical community coincided with important advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease in the 1960s and 1970s. The discussion that follows uses that empirical foundation to describe an analysis of an important medical problem. The chapter describes the organization of tree diagrams that represent the interactions between the decisions and uncertainties in a decision problem. Therefore, a simple calculation found a solution to the decision problem.