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A Decision Theoretic Approach to Empirical Treatment of Bacteraemia Originating from the Urinary Tract

Authors :
Kristian G. Olesen
Leonard Leibovici
Henrik Carl Schønheyder
Christian Riekehr
Anders Geill Kjær
Brian Kristensen
Steen Andreassen
Source :
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine ISBN: 9783540661627, AIMDM
Publication Year :
1999
Publisher :
Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 1999.

Abstract

Empirical antibiotic treatment with broad-spectrum antibiotics provides a high probability of covering treatment, but is associated with unnecessary costs as high drug prices, side-effects, and facilitated development of antibiotic resistance. A decision support system (DSS) based upon a causal probabilistic network (CPN) was constructed from a database with 491 cases (1992-94) of urosepticaemia and validated on 426 cases (1995-96). The CPN uses decision theory to balance the gain in life-years due to therapy against the costs of the antibiotic therapy, i.e. price, side-effects and ecological cost. The DSS selected antibiotics of an overall lower price, higher coverage and less ecological cost than the antibiotics actually chosen for empirical treatment. Thus, a DSS incorporating the CPN could achieve a desirable antibiotic policy, and it holds promise for improving empirical antibiotic therapy.

Details

ISBN :
978-3-540-66162-7
ISBNs :
9783540661627
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine ISBN: 9783540661627, AIMDM
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........e0b7f920278ce780676294cc16488b8b
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48720-4_21