Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) was developed by Charles Ragin in 1987 for the comparative analysis of small data sets. The method has become widespread in sociological and economic research. There are examples of successful use of QCA in the field of medicine and epidemiology. The purpose of this review is to describe the key stages of QCA with a discussion the application of this method to the analysis of medical and epidemiological data.
The accuracy of the developed method for determining the 3–4 stages of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic viral hepatitis C in comparison with the «gold standard» of diagnosis (liver biopsy) was 80.56% (95% CI: 69.53–88.94%), sensitivity — 66.67%, specificity — 94.44%.
FP Test is a method for diagnosing the stage of liver fibrosis and the degree of activity of chronic hepatitis according to the results of blood tests.
The method is a machine learning model based on an artificial neural network that accepts the following clinical and laboratory parameters: gender, age, height and weight of the patient, as well as platelet count, levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and gamma-glutamyltranspeptidases (GGT).
