Methodology for Constructing a Short-Term Event Risk Score in Heart Failure Patients

Abstract

We present a methodology for constructing a short-term event risk score in heart failure patients from an ensemble predictor, using bootstrap samples, two different classification rules, logistic regression and linear discriminant analysis for mixed data, continuous or categorical, and random selection of explanatory variables to build individual predictors. We define a measure of the importance of each variable in the score and an event risk measure by an odds-ratio. Moreover, we establish a property of linear discriminant analysis for mixed data. This methodology is applied to EPHESUS trial patients on whom biological, clinical and medical history variables were measured.