L. Franchini et al., A neural network approach to the outcome definition on first treatment with sertraline in a psychiatric population, ARTIF INT M, 23(3), 2001, pp. 239-248
Therapy decision is one of the most important tasks clinicians have to perf
orm in their clinical practice. The decision process requires taking into a
ccount many different factors. The Authors have proposed a neural computing
approach for supporting clinical decision analysis. The mathematical model
of artificial neural network (ANN) has been applied on a pool of clinical
information gathered through case description freely filled by senior psych
iatrists into 416 clinical charts. Sertraline, as drug for treatment, has b
een chosen since its clinical uses range from treatment of depression to th
at of many other psychiatric clinical conditions so that it has been though
t to be a good candidate to this type of study. The ANN performance in fore
casting successful and unsuccessful treatment cases showed an overall accur
acy of classification of 97.35%. This result suggests a possible future app
lication of this method to obtain a reliable prediction of a given psychiat
ric patient outcome during a specific psychopharmacological therapy, optimi
sing the decisional making process. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All righ
ts reserved.