Індивідуалізована хірургічна тактика при синдромі діабетичної стопи

The aim of the work: to develop an individualized algorithm for surgical treatment of patients with diabetic foot syndrome (DFS). Materials and Methods. The comprehensive clinical study covers 123 cases of surgical treatment of DFS (patients of various degrees according to the PEDIS classification, I–V stages according to F. Wagner, with mild, moderate, severe infection according to IDSA). The development of the algorithm of surgical activity in DFS was carried out according to the recommendations of the Institute for Algorithmic Medicine (Houston, USA), using software (HTML/XML/GMT) package Document Exploration and Linking Tool/ ddons (DELTA) developed by Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Information Angi­neering Group, Vienna, Austria. Results and Discussion. Angiographic or technical success of endovascular interventions, which leads to a significant increase in the lumen of the vessel in the area of ​​stenosis or occlusion, was obtained in 94.3 % of cases. The technical success of balloon angioplasty was observed in almost all cases; the slightly worse angiographic results were obtained with interventions on several arteries of the shin – 55.0–94.1 % of successful angioplasties. In ischemic and mixed neuroischemic forms, most patients were able to compensate for critical ischemia by performing vascular interventions. The proposed algorithm of surgical interventions for DFS requires further study under conditions of greater randomization and expansion of the cohort of patients.Цель работы: разработать индивидуализированный метод хирургического лечения больных синдромом диабетической стопы (СДС). Материалы и методы. Комплексное клиническое исследование охватывает 123 случая хирургического лечения СДС (больные различной степени по классификации PEDIS, I–V стадий за F. Wagner, с легкой, умеренной, тяжелой инфекцией с IDSA). Разработку алгоритма хирургической активности при СДС осуществляли согласно рекомендациям Institute for Algorithmic Medicine (Хьюстон, США) с использованием программного (HTML / XML / GMT) пакета Document Exploration and Linking Tool / Addons (DELTA) разработанного Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Information Engineering Group, Vienna, Austria. Результаты исследований и их обсуждение. Ангиографический или технический успех эндоваскулярных вмешательств, что приводит к существенному увеличению просвета сосуда в зоне стеноза или окклюзии, был нами получен в 94,3 % наблюдений. Технический успех баллонной ангиопластики наблюдался практически во всех случаях, несколько хуже ангиографические результаты получены при вмешательствах на нескольких артериях голени – 55,0–94,1 % успешных ангиопластики. При ишемической и смешанной нейроишемической формах у большинства больных удавалось компенсировать критическую ишемию выполнением сосудистых вмешательств. Предложенный алгоритм хирургических вмешательств при СДС требует дальнейшего изучения в условиях большей рандомизации и расширения когорты пациентов.Мета роботи: розробити індивідуалізований алгоритм хірургічного лікування хворих на синдром діабетичної стопи (СДС). Матеріали і методи. Комплексне клінічне дослідження охоплює 123 випадки хірургічного лікування СДС (хворі різних ступенів за класифікацією PEDIS, І-V стадій за F. Wagner, з легкою, помірною, тяжкою інфекцією за IDSA). Розробку алгоритму хірургічної активності при СДС здійснювали згідно з рекомендаціями Institute for Algorithmic Medicine (Гʼюстон, США), з використанням програмного (HTML/XML/GMT) пакету Document Exploration and Linking Tool / Addons (DELTA), розробленого Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Information Engineering Group, Vienna, Austria. Результати досліджень та їх обговорення. Ангіографічний або технічний успіх ендоваскулярних втручань, що призводить до істотного збільшення просвіту судини в зоні стенозу або оклюзії, ми отримали в 94,3 % спостережень. Технічний успіх балонної ангіопластики спостерігали практично в усіх випадках, дещо гірші ангіографічні результати отримано при втручаннях на декількох артеріях гомілки – 55,0–94,1 % успішних ангіопластик. При ішемічній та змішаній нейроішемічній формах у більшості хворих вдавалося компенсувати критичну ішемію виконанням судинних втручань. Запропонований алгоритм хірургічних втручань при СДС потребує подальшого вивчення за умов більшої рандомізації та розширення когорти пацієнтів

Personalized conciliation of clinical guidelines for comorbid patients through multi-agent planning

[EN] The conciliation of multiple single-disease guidelines for comorbid patients entails solving potential clinical interactions, discovering synergies in the diagnosis and the recommendations, and managing clinical equipoise situations. Personalized conciliation of multiple guidelines considering additionally patient preferences brings some further difficulties. Recently, several works have explored distinct techniques to come up with an automated process for the conciliation of clinical guidelines for comorbid patients but very little attention has been put in integrating the patient preferences into this process. In this work, a Multi-Agent Planning (MAP) framework that extends previous work on single-disease temporal Hierarchical Task Networks (HTN) is proposed for the automated conciliation of clinical guidelines with patient-centered preferences. Each agent encapsulates a single-disease Computer Interpretable Guideline (CIG) formalized as an HTN domain and conciliates the decision procedures that encode the clinical recommendations of its CIG with the decision procedures of the other agents' CIGs. During conciliation, drug-related interactions, scheduling constraints as well as redundant actions and multiple support interactions are solved by an automated planning process. Moreover, the simultaneous application of the patient preferences in multiple diseases may potentially bring about contradictory clinical decisions and more interactions. As a final step, the most adequate personalized treatment plan according to the patient preferences is selected by a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) process. The MAP approach is tested on a case study that builds upon a simplified representation of two real clinical guidelines for Diabetes Mellitus and Arterial Hypertension.This work has been partially supported by Spanish Government Projects MINECO TIN2014-55637-C2-2-R and TIN2015-71618-R.Fernández-Olivares, J.; Onaindia De La Rivaherrera, E.; Castillo Vidal, L.; Jordán, J.; Cózar, J. (2019). Personalized conciliation of clinical guidelines for comorbid patients through multi-agent planning. Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. 96:167-186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artmed.2018.11.003S1671869

A Scalable Architecture for Incremental Specification and Maintenance of Procedural and Declarative Clinical Decision-Support Knowledge

Clinical guidelines have been shown to improve the quality of medical care and to reduce its costs. However, most guidelines exist in a free-text representation and, without automation, are not sufficiently accessible to clinicians at the point of care. A prerequisite for automated guideline application is a machine-comprehensible representation of the guidelines. In this study, we designed and implemented a scalable architecture to support medical experts and knowledge engineers in specifying and maintaining the procedural and declarative aspects of clinical guideline knowledge, resulting in a machine comprehensible representation. The new framework significantly extends our previous work on the Digital electronic Guidelines Library (DeGeL) The current study designed and implemented a graphical framework for specification of declarative and procedural clinical knowledge, Gesher. We performed three different experiments to evaluate the functionality and usability of the major aspects of the new framework: Specification of procedural clinical knowledge, specification of declarative clinical knowledge, and exploration of a given clinical guideline. The subjects included clinicians and knowledge engineers (overall, 27 participants). The evaluations indicated high levels of completeness and correctness of the guideline specification process by both the clinicians and the knowledge engineers, although the best results, in the case of declarative-knowledge specification, were achieved by teams including a clinician and a knowledge engineer. The usability scores were high as well, although the clinicians’ assessment was significantly lower than the assessment of the knowledge engineers

Practice-centred e-health system design for cross-boundary clinical decision support

The idea of cross-boundary clinical decision support has the potential to transform the design of future work environments for e-health through a connected healthcare system that allows for harnessing of information and peer opinion across geographical boundaries for better decision-making. The trouble, however, is that the use of healthcare information in decision-making usually occurs within the context of a complex structure of clinical work practices that is often shaped by a wide range of factors, including organisational culture, local work contexts, socially constructed traditions of actions, experiences and patients’ circumstances. They vary across geographical boundaries, and have remained largely unaccounted for in the design of current e-health systems. As a result, achieving the visions of e-health, particularly in relation to cross-boundary clinical decision support, requires a rethinking of key clinical and organisational processes in a manner that accommodates work practice as a fundamental part of how clinicians work and make decisions in the real-world. This thesis investigates the concept of work practice as a design requirement for cross-boundary clinical decision support systems in e-health. It is argued that the task of enabling informed decision support across geographical boundaries in e-health can be enhanced through an understanding, and a formal characterisation, of work practices in various healthcare work contexts, and a specification of how practice can be used, managed and transformed to suit various clinical problem situations and patients’ needs. This research takes a clinical practice-centred approach to inform e-health system design, and draws on the concept of work practice and cultural-historical theory in social science as well as situation awareness in order to describe the local traditions of actions that guide clinicians’ work in the real world. It contributes a coherent conceptual architecture comprising a practice-centred awareness model for cross-boundary awareness, a frame-based technique, named PracticeFrame, for formalising and representing work practice for system design, and ContextMorph, for adaptively transforming a suggestion across work boundaries to suit a user’s local work context and practices. An in-depth user-informed requirements capture was used to gain an understanding of clinical work practices for designing e-health system for cross-boundary decision support. A proof of concept prototype, named CaDHealth, which is based on the Brahms work practice modelling tool and includes a work practice visualisation model, named the practice display, was developed and used to conduct user-based evaluation. The evaluation revealed that incorporating practice-centred awareness enhances usefulness, acceptance and user adoption of e-health systems for cross-boundary clinical decision support

R.: Tracing the Formalization Steps of Textual Guidelines

Abstract. This paper presents a new guideline authoring tool, called Guideline Markup Tool (GMT). It proposes two useful features, which are missing in existing tools. First, it facilitates the translation of a free-text guideline into a formal representation, providing special XML macros. Second, it can be used to create link