Computer-Aided Assessment of Drug-Induced Lung Disease Plausibility

Abstract

Drug-induced lung disease (DILD), often suspected in pneumology, is still a diagnostic challenge because of the ever increasing number of pneumotoxic drugs and the large diversity of observed clinical patterns. As a result, DILD can only be evoked as a plausible diagnosis after the exclusion of all other possible causes. PneumoDoc is a computer-based decision support that formalises the evaluation process of the drug-imputability of a lung disease. The knowledge base has been structured as a two-level decision tree. Patient-specific chronological and semiological criteria are first examined leading to the assessment of a qualitative intrinsic DILD plausibility score. Then literature-based data including the frequency of DILD with a given drug and the frequency of the observed clinical situation among the clinical patterns reported with the same drug are evaluated to compute a qualitative extrinsic DILD plausibility score. Based on a simple multimodal qualitative model, extrinsic and intrinsic scores are combined to yield an overall DILD plausibility score.