Background: In order to evaluate the discrimination performance of an ordinal model for improved disease screening, a new test was proposed where information was obtained across all samples simultaneously.
Methods: The ordinal c-index builds upon the volume under the surface methodology without focusing on the accompanying receiver operating characteristic surfaces. However, it can be simplified to an average of pairwise c-indexes. In this paper, a set-based estimate (information was obtained across all samples simultaneously) was proposed by summing all correctly ordered groups. The asymptotic distribution of this proposed estimate was derived using U-statistics.
Results: A predictive model was applied using the blood urea nitrogen/creatinine ratio to discriminate stroke in evolution in acute ischemic stroke patients, which could potentially be life-saving in emergency departments.
Conclusions: By conducting Monte Carlo simulations, it was concluded that the measure proposed herein is a better choice for clinical use because of the asymmetry of the predicted probabilities of groups.
Keywords: Acute ischemic stroke; Discriminative power; National institutes of health stroke scale; Ordinal outcomes; Stroke in evolution.
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