Sevim Dilek, Felder Stefan
Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
CINCH, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.
Front Health Serv. 2022 Mar 21;2:825315. doi: 10.3389/frhs.2022.825315. eCollection 2022.
We consider medical decision-making under diagnostic and therapeutic uncertainty and analyze how ambiguity aversion affects the decisions to test and treat, thereby contributing to the understanding of the observed heterogeneity of such decisions. We show that under diagnostic ambiguity (i.e., the probability of disease is ambiguous), prior testing becomes more attractive if the default option is no treatment and less so if the default option is treatment. Conversely, with therapeutic ambiguity (i.e., the probability of a successful treatment is ambiguous), ambiguity aversion reduces the tolerance toward treatment failure so that the test option is chosen at a lower probability of failure. We differentiate between conditional and unconditional ambiguity aversion and show that this differentiation has implications for the propensity to test. We conclude by discussing the normative scope of ambiguity aversion for the recommendations and decisions of regulatory bodies.
我们考虑在诊断和治疗存在不确定性的情况下进行医学决策，并分析模糊厌恶如何影响检测和治疗的决策，从而有助于理解此类决策中观察到的异质性。我们表明，在诊断模糊（即疾病概率不明确）的情况下，如果默认选项是不治疗，那么预先检测会更具吸引力；而如果默认选项是治疗，则吸引力会降低。相反，在治疗模糊（即成功治疗的概率不明确）的情况下，模糊厌恶会降低对治疗失败的容忍度，从而使得在失败概率较低时才会选择检测选项。我们区分了条件性模糊厌恶和无条件模糊厌恶，并表明这种区分对检测倾向有影响。最后，我们讨论了模糊厌恶在监管机构的建议和决策方面的规范范围。
