Evidence map›Paper›PMID 22934236›Full record

ArticleJournal of pathology informatics2012

The feasibility of using natural language processing to extract clinical information from breast pathology reports.

Julliette M Buckley, Suzanne B Coopey, John Sharko, Fernanda Polubriaginof, Brian Drohan, Ahmet K Belli, Elizabeth M H Kim, Judy E Garber, Barbara L Smith, Michele A Gadd and 4 more

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of pathology informatics, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
52citing papers in PubMed, 3 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

52 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

14 authors.

Julliette M BuckleyDepartment of Surgical Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Suzanne B Coopey
John Sharko
Fernanda Polubriaginof
Brian Drohan
Ahmet K Belli
Elizabeth M H Kim
Judy E Garber
Barbara L Smith
Michele A Gadd
Michelle C Specht
Constance A Roche
Thomas M Gudewicz
Kevin S Hughes

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

objectiveThe opportunity to integrate clinical decision support systems into clinical practice is limited due to the lack of structured, machine readable data in the current format of the electronic health record. Natural language processing has been designed to convert free text into machine readable data. The aim of the current study was to ascertain the feasibility of using natural language processing to extract clinical information from >76,000 breast pathology reports. APPROACH AND PROCEDURE: Breast pathology reports from three institutions were analyzed using natural language processing software (Clearforest, Waltham, MA) to extract information on a variety of pathologic diagnoses of interest. Data tables were created from the extracted information according to date of surgery, side of surgery, and medical record number. The variety of ways in which each diagnosis could be represented was recorded, as a means of demonstrating the complexity of machine interpretation of free text.

resultsThere was widespread variation in how pathologists reported common pathologic diagnoses. We report, for example, 124 ways of saying invasive ductal carcinoma and 95 ways of saying invasive lobular carcinoma. There were >4000 ways of saying invasive ductal carcinoma was not present. Natural language processor sensitivity and specificity were 99.1% and 96.5% when compared to expert human coders.

conclusionWe have demonstrated how a large body of free text medical information such as seen in breast pathology reports, can be converted to a machine readable format using natural language processing, and described the inherent complexities of the task.

Indexed as

Breast pathology reportsclinical decision supportnatural language processing

Identifiers

PMID22934236
PMCPMC3424662

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.