Citation

Pamer C, Serpi T, Finkelstein J. AMIA Annu. Symp. Proc. 2008; 2008: 550-554.

Affiliation

US Federal Drug Administration

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, American Medical Informatics Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

18999168

PMCID

PMC2656088

Abstract

Our study is a cross-sectional analysis of Maryland poisoning deaths for years 2003 and 2004. We used Classification and Regression Tree (CART) methodology to classify undetermined intent Maryland poisoning deaths as either unintentional or suicidal poisonings. The predictive ability of the selected set of variables (poisoned in the home or workplace, type of location where poisoned, place of death, the type of poison, race and age of victim, year of death) was extremely good. Of the 301 test cases, only eight were misclassified under the regression tree created by the CART. Of the 1,204 Maryland undetermined intent poisoning deaths, CART classified 903 as suicides and 301 as unintentional deaths. The major strength of our study is the use of CART to differentiate with a high degree of accuracy between unintentional and suicidal poisoning deaths among Maryland undetermined intent poisoning deaths.

Language: en