Management of uncomplicated urinary tract infections using fuzzy cognitive maps

Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) is a bacterial infection that affects any part of the urinary tract. It can be classified as uncomplicated (patients with urinary tracts that are normal from both structural and functional perspective) and complicated. The treatment of uncomplicated urinary tract infections is a complex medical task where a number of parameters, tests, symptoms and laboratory results are present. The knowledge of physicians according to the symptoms and clinical measurements are the main point to succeed a diagnosis, suggest a therapeutic treatment and monitoring patient status. This paper presents the results of our investigation on the problem of handling medical knowledge for decision making by using the soft computing technique of fuzzy cognitive maps. The fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) is an efficient technique for modeling and representing experts´ knowledge. Due to its easy graphical representation and simulation process the proposed FCM can be used to make the medical knowledge widely available through computer consultation systems.