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Engineering Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering

University of Massachusetts Amherst

2020

Markov decision process

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Optimal Mammography Schedule Estimates Under Varying Disease Burden, Infrastructure Availability, And Other Cause Mortality: A Comparative Analyses Of Six Low- And Middle- Income Countries, Shifali Shifali Dec 2020

Optimal Mammography Schedule Estimates Under Varying Disease Burden, Infrastructure Availability, And Other Cause Mortality: A Comparative Analyses Of Six Low- And Middle- Income Countries, Shifali Shifali

Masters Theses

Low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) have a higher mortality-to-incidence ratio for breast cancer compared to high-income countries (HICs) because of late-stage diagnosis. Mammography screening is recommended for early diagnosis, however, current screening guidelines are only generalized by economic disparities, and are based on extrapolation of data from randomized controlled trials in HICs, which have different disease burdens and all-cause mortality compared to LMICs. Moreover, the infrastructure capacity in LMICs is far below that needed for adopting current screening guidelines. This study analyzes the impact of disease burden, infrastructure availability, and other cause mortality on optimal mammography screening schedules for LMICs. Further, these …