EVALUATION OF A DECISION-SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR INOPERABLE NONSMALL CELL LUNG-CANCER

The purpose of this study was to find out whether a decision-support s ystem is able to assist a clinician in predicting patient outcome and in selecting optimal treatment in oncology. The domain of the evaluate d decision-support prototype was primary therapeutic decision making i n inoperable non-small cell lung cancer. The performance of the protot ype was tested on retrospective material consisting of 112 patients tr eated by radiotherapy. Survival was the endpoint for examining whether the treatment decision proposed by the system was more accurate than the decision actually made by the clinician. Certain prognostic variab les were used by the system to classify patients into two treatment gr oups, radical or palliative radiotherapy. The median survival times of these groups were 15 and 7 months, respectively, compared with 9 and 8 months in the corresponding groups classified by the clinician. Our results indicate that clinicians need support in treatment selection a nd that decision-support systems could be a potential answer.