According to methodological standards for the development of clinical decision rules in the Emergency Department, the reliability of predictor variables should be tested by determining the intraobserver and interobserver agreement [ 25].
Nevertheless, data validating their sensitivity and reliability as predictors of severe disease are scarce.
Sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV were analyzed to determine the reliability of predictors of the response to therapy.
De Bruijn et al. recently supported this result with their retrospective study from 2012 on the reliability of predictors for cut-out by identifying the central-inferior and anterior-inferior positions as being highly protective against lag screw cut-out [ 32].
The need to estimate the potential functional impact of any non-synonymous variant is hence a priority and yet the discrepancy of their pathogenicity predictions (Thomas and Kejariwal 2004; Adzhubei et al. 2013; Capriotti et al. 2013), when different algorithms are used, highlights the need for methods that may weigh the reliability of predictors and yield a single pathogenicity score.
We evaluated the accuracy and reliability of 11 predictor variables used in the evaluation of patients with syncope and developed a highly sensitive clinical decision rule that may be used to augment physician judgment and allow physicians to rationally decide which patients with syncope may need admission according to their risk for short-term outcomes.
We assessed the interobserver reliability of the predictor variables by having an independent second physician repeat the assessment of the patient.
Efforts are being made to improve the sensitivity of the Bacteroides assay with the hope of improving its reliability as a predictor of illness.
Microalbuminuria is a practical alternative, but its reliability as a predictor of DN progression has been questioned, due to frequent reversion to normoalbuminuria [ 2], and the occurrence of typical DN histopathology in the absence of albuminuria [ 3, 4].
Several studies have shown the utility of S-100 measurements in predicting brain damage and poor neurologic outcome, but the question then arises as to whether mild therapeutic hypothermia (MTH) can affect S-100 levels and thus its reliability as a predictor under those circumstances.
This paper presents an empirical reliability model, called PRESS (Predictor of Reliability for Energy-Saving Schemes).
