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A pilot study for development of a novel tool for clinical decision making to identify fallers among ophthalmic patients
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Melillo, Paolo, Orrico, Ada, Attanasio, Marcella, Rossi, Settimio, Pecchia, Leandro, Chirico, F., Testa, Francesco and Simonelli, Francesca (2015) A pilot study for development of a novel tool for clinical decision making to identify fallers among ophthalmic patients. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 15 (Supplement 3). S6. doi:10.1186/1472-6947-15-S3-S6 ISSN 1472-6947.
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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6947-15-S3-S6
Abstract
Background
Falls in the elderly is a major problem. Although falls have a multifactorial etiology, a commonly cited cause of falls in older people is poor vision. This study proposes a method to discriminate fallers and non-fallers among ophthalmic patients, based on data-mining algorithms applied to health and socio-demographic information.
Methods
A group of 150 subjects aged 55 years and older, recruited at the Eye Clinic of the Second University of Naples, underwent a baseline ophthalmic examination and a standardized questionnaire, including lifestyles, general health, social engagement and eyesight problems. A subject who reported at least one fall within one year was considered as faller, otherwise as non-faller. Different tree-based data-mining algorithms (i.e., C4.5, Adaboost and Random Forest) were used to develop automatic classifiers and their performances were evaluated by assessing the receiver-operator characteristics curve estimated with the 10-fold-crossvalidation approach.
Results
The best predictive model, based on Random Forest, enabled to identify fallers with a sensitivity and specificity rate of 72.6% and 77.9%, respectively. The most informative variables were: intraocular pressure, best corrected visual acuity and the answers to the total difficulty score of the Activities of Daily Vision Scale (a questionnaire for the measurement of visual disability).
Conclusions
The current study confirmed that some ophthalmic features (i.e. cataract surgery, lower intraocular pressure values) could be associated with a lower fall risk among visually impaired subjects. Finally, automatic analysis of a combination of visual function parameters (either self-evaluated either by ophthalmological test) and other health information, by data-mining algorithms, could be a feasible tool for identifying fallers among ophthalmic patients.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | R Medicine > RE Ophthalmology | ||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Engineering > Engineering | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Medical technology -- Decision making, Ophthalmology -- Decision making, Falls (Accidents) -- Decision making | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making | ||||||
Publisher: | BioMed Central Ltd. | ||||||
ISSN: | 1472-6947 | ||||||
Official Date: | 11 September 2015 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 15 | ||||||
Number: | Supplement 3 | ||||||
Article Number: | S6 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1186/1472-6947-15-S3-S6 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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