Coping with the Variability of Medical Terms

OBJECTIVES To cope with medical terms, which present a high variability of expression through a single natural language, in the sense that any term may be reformulated in hundred of different ways. METHODS A typology of term variants is presented as a systematic approach in order to favour the implementation of an exhaustive solution. Then, an algorithm able to handle all variants is designed. RESULTS Using MetaMap, single terms are analyzed with a success rate varying between 68 and 88 %; the algorithm presented in this paper improves this situation. CONCLUSIONS This experience shows that a semantic driven method, based on a thesaurus, provides a satisfactory solution to the problem of variability of a single term. The presented typology is representative of most variants in a language.