Optimizing testing and treatment guidelines for patients with chronic kidney disease
Periodic laboratory tests help clinicians measure the progress of a disease and forecast when a treatment should start. Forecast accuracy is particularly important when there is a lead time to prepare patients for treatment. For example, chronic kidney disease patients who will need dialysis should ideally have a type of vascular access (called an arteriovenous fistula) created months in advance so that it matures by the time dialysis is needed. It is undesirable to have the fistula ready too early or too late, which may occur due to the uncertainty in fistula maturation and dialysis start times. We present a data-driven decision model that seeks to balance these tradeoffs under uncertainty in recommending testing and fistula preparation times.
Multimedia
