The symptoms of asthma and cough-variant asthma, common conditions in children, overlap those of other respiratory diseases. On the other hand, patients with COPD and asthma exhibit similar clinical symptoms. Compared to patients with COPD or asthma alone, patients
with asthma-COPD overlap have more frequent acute effects.
While pulmonary function tests are carried out to evaluate the clinical value of different types of respiratory diseases in children or infants, a group of researchers set out to clinically evaluate the efficacy of the pulmonary function tests.
Method
- For the pulmonary function tests, the researchers selected the COPD gene dataset and performed feature selection using the deep belief networks-support vector machines (DBN-SVM) scoring method.
- For analysis and comparison, they further built the differential diagnosis models using ROC curves.
- To assess the efficacy of the pulmonary function test, the researchers further conducted clinical diagnostic tests for pediatric asthma and cough variant asthma on two groups of children.
Result
The sensitive features associated with COPD and ACO classification using the deep belief network model were found to be in good agreement with known clinical diagnostic strategies.
Lung function rates between the groups
FEV1, PEF, and FVC levels were significantly lower (p<0.05), in healthy children. FEV1/FVC%, RV, and RV/TCL% were significantly higher (p<0.05) in children with asthma and cough variant asthma during acute exacerbation and chronic persistence.
Diagnostic rates of pulmonary function test vs. conventional test
The diagnostic rates of pulmonary function test for typical asthma and cough variant asthma were significantly higher than those of conventional tests (p<0.05).
Table 1. Comparison of the diagnostic accuracy of conventional examination and pulmonary function tests in children
| Method | Typical asthma(n=8) | Cough Variant asthma(n=32) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diagnostic rate | Misdiagnosis rate | Diagnostic rate | Diagnostic rate | |
| Routine inspection | 38()79.17 | 10(20.83) | 15(46.88) | 17(53.12) |
| Pulmonary function test | 47()97.92 | 1(2.08) | 30(93.75) | 2(6.25) |
| x² | -1.6318 | 1.6318 | -2.5154 | 2.5158 |
| P value | <0.05 | <0.05 | <0.05 | <0.05 |
Pulmonary function tests can accurately diagnose pediatric asthma and cough variant asthma. Further, the DBNs model could become a significant diagnostic decision aid.
Reference: Li H, Zhang X, Zhao Q, et al. Assessment of clinical diagnostic efficacy of pulmonary function test based on DBN-SVM of pediatric asthma and cough variant asthma. Comput Intell Neurosci. 2022;2022:1182114.