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This term often refers to biomedical factors known to influence or predict health outcomes. These are taken into account in clinical practice, when estimating a patient’s prognosis. Additionally, clinical predictors are considered in clinical research, when trying to test new etiological or prognostic factors, and there is a need to statistically control for known or previously empirically established clinical predictors, which could possibly explain the role of the new tested factor(s). In behavior medicine, this is often the common approach, when testing the effects of a psychosocial factor on health outcomes. Often, it is crucial to statistically control for the effects of known clinical predictors in behavior medicine, as clinical risk factors are either important in predicting prognosis or since they may be associated with and partly explain the prognostic effects of psychosocial factors. For example, in coronary heart disease, clinical risk...
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References and Further Readings
Chida, Y., Hamer, M., Wardle, J., & Steptoe, A. (2008). Do stress-related psychosocial factors contribute to cancer incidence and survival? Nature Clinical Practice Oncology, 5, 466–475.
Denollet, J., Sys, S. U., Stroobant, N., Rombouts, H., Gillebert, T. C., & Brutsaert, D. L. (1996). Personality as independent predictor of long-term mortality in patients with coronary heart disease. Lancet, 347(8999), 417–421.
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Gidron, Y. (2016). Clinical Predictors. In: Gellman, M., Turner, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1368-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6439-6_1368-2
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Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6439-6
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