SUMMARY OF COMPLEX CAUSAL DIAGNOSTIC HYPOTHESES

The Heart Disease Program produces detailed causal diagnostic hypothes es for patients with cardiovascular diseases. This poster discusses ou r experience with summarizing these hypotheses for the physician. The basic approach is to merge the nodes of the structure indicating causa l mechanism into the more important nodes. Analysis of the results sho ws that to generate effective summaries the identification of syndrome s is very important, the definitions of the labels need to be carefull y enforced, the causality of diseases should be supported by evidence and not just probability, and the sense of causal order must be carefu lly preserved.