Statistical methods in diagnostic medicine using SAS software
page Paper 211-30. (2005)3826<m:linebreak></m:linebreak>Proves diagnòstiques.Abstract
An important goal in diagnostic medicine research is to estimate and compare the accuracies of diagnostic tests, which serve two purposes 1) providing reliable information about a patient's condition and 2) influencing patient care. In developing screening tools, researchers often evaluate the discriminating power of the screening test by concentrating on the sensitivity and specificity of the test and the area under the ROC curve. We propose to give a gentle introduction to the statistical methods commonly used in diagnostic medicine covering some broad issues and scenarios. In particular, power calculations, estimation of the accuracy of a diagnostic test, comparison of accuracies of competing diagnostic tests, and regression analysis of diagnostic accuracy data will be discussed. Some existing SAS procedures and SAS macros for analyzing the data from diagnostic studies will be summarized. These concepts will be illustrated using datasets from clinical disciplines like radiology, neurology and infectious diseases.