title: Objective evaluation of degree of illness with the weighted Mahalanobis distance. A study for patients suffering from chronic obturative lung disease.
abstract: An objective evaluation of the state of patients suffering from chronic obturative lung disease is presented. This evaluation is based on the standardized weighted Mahalanobis distance between a patient and a "centre of health". The method works for both continuous and discrete features. The results of the automatic valuation were compared with the ranked physician's evaluation. This was done by the Spearman rank correlation coefficient, which was statistically significant in all computed variants.
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001249:Asthma / Q000503:physiopathology; D001991:Bronchitis / Q000503:physiopathology; D003953:Diagnosis-Related Groups; D006801:Humans; D008173:Lung Diseases, Obstructive / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008432:Mathematical Computing; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012984:Software