Comparing models for quantitative risk assessment: an application to the European Registry of foreign body injuries in children.

Risk Assessment is the systematic study of decisions subject to uncertain consequences. An increasing interest has been focused on modeling techniques like Bayesian Networks since their capability of (1) combining in the probabilistic framework different type of evidence including both expert judgments and objective data; (2) overturning previous beliefs in the light of the new information being received and (3) making predictions even with incomplete data. In this work, we proposed a comparison among Bayesian Networks and other classical Quantitative Risk Assessment techniques such as Neural Networks, Classification Trees, Random Forests and Logistic Regression models.

Scale-up approach in CATI surveys for estimating the number of foreign body injuries in the aero-digestive tract in children.

Foreign body injuries are a well-known threat to children due to the high risk of ingestion of small objects and choking. In order to depict the epidemiological framework of such injuries, data are mostly available for hospitalizations and partially for emergency room visits. The hidden part of the phenomenon consisting of minor self-resolved injuries is still unknown.

Modeling the risk: innovative approaches to understand and quantify the risk of severe FB injury.

Objectives: The entry of a small item into the respiratory or digestive tract is still one of the leading causes of injuries in children up to 14 years old. The aim of the paper is to provide a quantitative risk assessment analysis for identifying consumer product features which contribute to increase the risk of sustaining a severe injury.

Methods: Data on foreign body injuries were collected in 28 European countries and one Pakistani hospital.

Information extraction approaches to unconventional data sources for "Injury Surveillance System": the case of newspapers clippings.

Injury Surveillance Systems based on traditional hospital records or clinical data have the advantage of being a well established, highly reliable source of information for making an active surveillance on specific injuries, like choking in children. However, they suffer the drawback of delays in making data available to the analysis, due to inefficiencies in data collection procedures. In this sense, the integration of clinical based registries with unconventional data sources like newspaper articles has the advantage of making the system more useful for early alerting.

Foreign body aspiration in children: field report of a German hospital.

Background: The aspiration of foreign bodies (FB), especially by small children, is a life-threatening situation and can be fatal. The aim of this survey was to study the types of foreign bodies in the upper airways and digestive tract, and the circumstances leading to the aspiration on the basis of hospital records of the Berlin University Hospital in Germany from 1997-2002.

Methods: We performed a retrospective review of hospital records using a standardized protocol.