Under-diagnosis can be measured when stroke patients are considered fuzzy sets

The authors have previously shown that when the same three broad categories of tests (blood, heart and vessel), are performed on each and every patient with ischemic stroke, each patient can be represented as a 'set as point' in the fuzzy hypercube given the 'fit' values [O,1] for each variable (C.M. Helgason and T.H. Jobe, 1998). Each patient of 30 in that study was represented as a 'set as point' of elements (blood, heart, vessel). Only one patient of the 30 was composed of variables that when added together equaled I. Thus we showed that when an event occurs, and the event is the stroke patient, there is more than one thing that happens at once and that the variables concurrently present in the patient that lead to thrombosis do not have to add up to one. The authors use the data from the previous study, i.e., the same fit values for blood, heart and vessel that were determined by two independent blinded raters, Rater I and Rater 2, of 30 patients with ischemic stroke, all of whom underwent the same diagnostic tests as part of the intuitive physician diagnostic approach of multiple concomitant hypotheses until proven otherwise for stroke etiology.