title: Aspects of certainty in patient classification using a health-related quality-of-life instrument in inflammatory bowel disease.
abstract: The study has focused on deriving a certainty measure for the classification of disease activity in patients suffering from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The aim is to build an Internet-based health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) questionnaire to continuously monitor a patient's condition. Data from 109 patients was collected four times in intervals of three months, using a standardized disease-specific quality-of-life questionnaire, the Rating Form of IBD Patient Concern (RFIPC), extended with 11 additional questions. Correlation analysis showed that the RFIPC items along with "general wellbeing" were highly correlated (significance < 0.001). Factor analysis confirmed this high correlation and only one factor was identified among those variables. Multivariate discriminant analysis was successful to 78.1% in classifying between cases of remission and relapse. Implementation of a smooth threshold function decreased the classification error. However, discrimination regarding change in disease activity over time has to be further improved.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Linkoping University, Sweden.
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Bergquist
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Babic
mesh_terms: D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D006801:Humans; D015212:Inflammatory Bowel Diseases / Q000145:classification*; D020407:Internet; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011788:Quality of Life; D012008:Recurrence; D018434:Sickness Impact Profile; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires