All simulators
Seeing vs Doing: the ICU
ICU patients die more often, yet admitting everyone saves lives: conditional versus interventional mortality.
Day 51: Interventions & the do-Operatorobserved difference
0.146
P(D|ICU) − P(D|no ICU)
causal effect
-0.038
do(ICU) − do(no ICU)
Severity drives both ICU admission and death. Seeing compares patients who happened to be admitted with those who were not; doing sets admission for everyone, cutting the arrow from severity into ICU (the mutilated graph) and averaging over the population's severity mix.