A new expert system for evaluating cardiosurgical patients in intensive care units: preliminary validation

A new expert system for the analysis of cardiosurgical patients in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) is described and preliminary validations performed. The system employs a hybrid inference engine. Which integrates both quantitative and qualitative reasoning in an original way. Causal knowledge of the main relationships among hemodynamic, metabolic and respiratory quantities is used to make predictions about the patient status starting from the value of a few quantities monitored in ICUs. Examples concerning six real patients are presented and discussed. In all cases, results of the expert systems substantially agree with those previously obtained using more traditional statistical classification techniques. As an essential improvement, the expert system also provides information on deep physiological quantities and causal relationships which may affect the patient status