Diagnostic Differentiation of Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, Influenza and Bacterial Meningitis by Classic and Fuzzy Mathematics

Abstract

Background: A correct diagnosis of a disease among several diseases with the same clinical symptoms is very important and is a difficult task in medical science. Misdiagnosis of these diseases in the short term causes very high and serious damage to the health of patients and usually results in loss of golden time. Objectives: In this paper, our purpose is to achieve the best conclusion, which contributes to the diagnosis of the critical illness without losing the golden opportunity based on clinical data and using mathematical models, especially fuzzy mathematics. Methods: The data regarding patient's signs and symptoms were collected in the hospitals. We attained the best choice of diseases among the considered options of diseases by using basic fuzzy rules, fuzzy control techniques, fuzzy mathematics and fuzzy systems. To write the basic fuzzy rules, the information that we used was adopted by experts in infectious diseases or data records of patients who reached a definite diagnosis of disease by various tests. Then, by using these rules, the system of mathematical equations was formed. By solving this system, coefficients of a linear equation were estimated witch its values according to the clinical signs of a patient indicates the probability that the patient will be infected with that disease. In this process, the number of patients studied is n not effective. But the more patients are studied, the more accurately the coefficients of the diagnosis equation are obtained. Results: The symptoms of some patients whose disease have been definitely diagnosed were used as inputs of the system of our equations and it was observed that the system's outputs approximately coincide the exact diagnosis of the disease, which indicates that the equations obtained for the diagnosis of diseases are acceptable. Conclusions: The findings of this study can help to correctly diagnose the disease without losing golden opportunities. We hope that using the results of this research, the error in the initial diagnosis of diseases is significantly reduced.