Derivation of a Clinical Prediction Rule for the Noninvasive Diagnosis of Varices in Children
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Identification of children who are at high risk for having varices using noninvasive tests would enable the selection of children for future studies of primary prophylaxis of variceal hemorrhage, but this has been inadequately studied. The objective of the study was to derive a noninvasive clinical prediction rule that is able to identify children with esophageal varices. METHODS: Fifty-one consecutive children with liver disease or portal hypertension who underwent endoscopy were included in the present retrospective study. At endoscopy, variceal size was graded on a 4-point Likert scale. Results of physical examination, blood tests, and abdominal ultrasound scan (USS) were recorded. Spleen length on USS was expressed as a standard deviation score (z score). A descriptive univariate analysis was performed on variables that were potentially associated with esophageal varices and multivariate logistic regression was then modeled to derive a clinical prediction rule. RESULTS: Esophageal varices were found in 17 of the 51 children (33%). Variables found to differ significantly between children with and without varices included platelet/spleen-length z score ratio (P < 0.001), platelet count (P < 0.001), international normalized ratio (P = 0.001), aspartate aminotransferase/alanine aminotransferase ratio (P = 0.002), and albumin (P = 0.003). Using multivariate logistic regression, a model with platelet count, spleen length z score, and albumin as the independent variables had the best fit. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for this clinical prediction rule was 0.93 (95% confidence interval 0.85-0.99), sensitivity 94%, specificity 81%, positive predictive value 0.83, negative predictive value 0.94, positive likelihood ratio 5, and negative likelihood ratio 0.06. CONCLUSIONS: This clinical prediction rule is a simple noninvasive measure that may identify children at high risk for esophageal varices. A prospective validation study is in progress.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.033 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".