Comparative analysis of MCDM methods for assessing the severity of chronic liver disease

Abstract

The paper presents the Characteristic Objects method as a potential multi-criteria decision-making method for use in medical issues. The proposed approach is compared with TOPSIS and AHP. For this purpose, assessment of the severity of Chronic Liver Disease (CLD) is used. The simulation experiment is presented on the basis of the Model For End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD). The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and Eurotransplant use MELD for prioritizing allocation of liver transplants. MELD is calculated from creatinine, bilirubin and international normalized ratio of the prothrombin time (INR). The correctness of the selection is examined among randomly selected one million pairs of patients. The result is expressed as a percentage of agreement between the assessed method and MELD selection. The Characteristic Objects method is completely free of the rank reversal phenomenon, obtained by using the set of characteristic objects. In this approach, the assessment of each alternative is obtained on the basis of the distance from characteristic objects and their values. As a result, correctness of the selection obtained by using the Characteristic Objects method is higher than those obtained by TOPSIS or AHP techniques.