The Development and Use of a Causal Model for Reasoning about Heart Failure

The investigation of causal models as a paradigm of automated reasoning has blossomed. However, there are a wide variety of views of what a causal model is. The causal models that have appeared in the literature range from the qualitative simulation models of Kuipers and Kassirer1 to the probabilistic organization schemes of Pearl.2 Investigation of a particular problem of medical diagnosis or management usually leads to the realization that there is some truth in all of the camps. The problem becomes how to cast the various aspects of the problem into the appropriate causal framework and how to integrate the divergent aspects of the problem into a coherent whole.