Abstract
The prognoses of adult patients with nephrotic syndrome were analyzed by two types of Markov model. One is the 3 state Markov model which consists of complete remission, incomplete remission and death states and the other one is the 4 state one in which the complete remission state in the 3 state model is devided into 2 states, never-relapse state and one having a possibility of relapse. The results were as follows; 1)the 3 state model estimated extremely poor or somewhat different prognosis comparing with the observed one. 2)The estimated prognosis by the 4 state model showed a good agreement with the actual one and the clinical empirical knowledge. Furthermore, the transition matrix of this model had acceptable stability. These suggested the validity of the prognostic estimation of adult nephrotic syndrome by the 4 state Markov model.
