Case Study of Endometriosis

Figure 1 shows the terms and ideas from a critical sentence (sentence 5) in the abstract. This research proposal described a randomized study comparing oral contraceptives versus the combination of leuprolide and norethindrone following surgery to remove endometriosis adhesions. The informative terms are highlighted in the sentence. The terms – efficacy, effective, operative, treatment and pelvic – were not in the knowledge base vocabulary and that fact is denoted by the red highlighting. Each of those in grey are nouns and eligible for inclusion in the endometriosis vocabulary. However, their contribution to understanding endometriosis was considered minimal. Decisions such as these are arbitrary and subject to change as the subject experts employ terms with increasing frequency in describing the topic. Black lines connect terms forming ideas that had been previously reported and entered in the endometriosis knowledge base. The thin grey lines connect terms forming ideas that were missing from the knowledge base.