We describe three main types of related prognosis questions: 'What is the most likely course?' (Course studies); 'What factors are associated with, or determine, outcome?' (Prognostic factor or explanatory studies); and 'Can we identify risk groups who are likely to have different outcomes?' (Risk group or outcome prediction studies).
The study shows that LAD provides an accurate and fully explanatory prognostic system for breast cancer using genomic data (that is, a system that, in addition to predicting good or poor prognosis, provides an individualized explanation of the reasons for that prognosis for each patient).
An important distinction in prognosis is made between prognostic factor models, also called explanatory models and outcome prediction models [ 7, 8].
There are significant differences between them regarding their level of specificity and generalizability, their descriptive and explanatory dimensions, their prognostic implications and their empirical soundness in low- and middle-income countries.
In addition, we performed an explanatory analysis to identify the prognostic factors affecting this population.
Fetal diagnostic and prognostic severity with inherent ambiguity was the only explanatory factor that reached statistical significance concerning three of the psychometric measures (Tables 4 and 5).
The present brief review examines the currently available biomarkers, and those under development, and asks whether they add sufficiently valuable, explanatory information over traditional diagnostic and prognostic criteria for CAP to warrant their routine use and improve patient management.
The explanatory variables included in the logistic regression were variables identified as potential prognostic factors by the univariate analysis (cutoff p < 0.05).
The potential for overfitting a well-known problem even in traditional single gene prognostic and predictor factor studies is simply made worse by the huge number of explanatory variables and small sample sizes.
Prognostic factors were selected using the stepwise procedure, specifying the significant levels for entering an additional explanatory variable into the model as 0.25 and for removing an explanatory variable from the model as 0.15.
