Risk Factors and Predictive Modeling for Aortic Aneurysm

Sammanfattning: In 1963 – 1965, a large-scale health screening survey was undertaken in Sweden and this data set was linked to data from the national cause of death register. The data set involved more than 60,000 participants whose age at death less than 80 years. During the follow-up period until 2007, a total of 437 (338 males and 99 females) participants died from aortic aneurysm. The survival analysis, continuation ratio model, and logistic regression were applied in order to identify significant risk factors. The Cox regression after stratification for AGE revealed that SEX, Blood Diastolic Pressure (BDP), and Beta-lipoprotein (BLP) were the most significant risk factors, followed by Cholesterol (KOL), Sialic Acid (SIA), height, Glutamic Oxalactic Transaminase, Urinary glucose (URIN_SOC), and Blood Systolic Pressure (BSP). Moreover, SEX and BDP were found as risk factors in almost every age group. Furthermore, BDP was strongly significant in both male and female subgroup.   The data set was divided into two sets: 70 percent for the training set and 30 percent for the test set in order to find the best technique for predicting aortic aneurysm. Five techniques were implemented: the Cox regression, the continuation ratio model, the logistic regression, the back-propagated artificial neural network, and the decision tree. The performance of each technique was evaluated by using area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. In our study, the continuation ratio and the logistic regression outperformed among the other techniques.