The Time Factor as an Associative Concept Relation in Modelling Post-Liver Transplant Management Complications

We propose a first termontological analysis of temporal parameters and relations applied to the case of medical complications in postliver transplant management (PLTM). Medical complications contribute to different degrees of morbidity and mortality in the process of medical follow-up after transplant surgery. Understanding the full ontological and conceptual complexity of such complex spanning (SPAN) time events time is a central issue in drawing an implementable semantic map of the potential causes of early and long term complications, their diagnosis and the potential effects due to medical treatment. The analysis is usage-based and relies on linguistic utterances for complications in a concise medical review article. 1 Intro: medical complications and associative relations in termontology This paper deals with medical complications and their termontological description. Termontology (Roche, 2007) combines insights from terminology and applied ontology, combining them with a linguistic dimension: whereas terminology is basically interested in complex tree representations between terms and their normalized definitions, applied ontology models (visual) representations of complex concept systems, including semantic relations that dynamically connect static entities in a terminological database. This paper combines both preoccupations, starting from descriptions of medical complications, more specifically those occurring in post-liver-transplant management (PLTM). In the area of liver transplantation, termontology improves understanding of conceptual structures based on the lexico-grammatical structures retrieved from scientific literature about complications following transplantation. So far, medical complications have not been the subject of much analysis in terminological or applied ontology. Yet, they represent a rich resource for investigating cause-effect relations that constitute a specific subcase of causal events. In a broader sense, a complication is any adverse, undesired and unintentional result of disease management. More technically, medical complications are iatrogenic (i.e. disease-related) subsets of cause-effect relations and refer to the (negative, adverse) morbid consequence of a disease or disorder resulting from unsuccessful disease management. Complications, occasionally known as suboptimal (negative) outcome, are not to be confused with sequelae of previous acute medical conditions and therapies. Negative outcomes can be subdivided into failure to cure (pre-existing conditions that remain unchanged after the transplantation procedure), negative sequel and complication (Clavien et al., 2006). Complications differ from the commonly expected sequelae resulting from an anterior acute medical condition and therapy. Understanding and dealing efficiently with postsurgical medical complications is a crucial issue for the improvement of healthcare quality, since complications require longer and more expensive treatment, and, more importantly, Proceedings of the conference Terminology and Artificial Intelligence 2015 (Granada, Spain)