No abstract

Viral hepatitis is the primary cause of liver diseases, among which liver cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer. However, this cancer is often diagnosed in the later stages, which makes treatment difficult or even impossible. This study applied deep learning (DL) models for the early prediction of liver cancer in a hepatitis cohort. In this study, we surveyed 1 million random samples from the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) to analyze viral hepatitis patients from 2002 to 2010. Then, we used DL models to predict liver cancer cases based on the history of diseases of the hepatitis cohort. Our results revealed the annual prevalence of hepatitis in Taiwan increased from 2002 to 2010, with an average annual percentage change (AAPC) of 5.8% (95% CI: 4.2-7.4). However, young people (aged 16-30 years) exhibited a decreasing trend, with an AAPC of −5.6 (95% CI: −8.1 to −2.9). The results of applying DL models showed that the convolution neural network (CNN) model yielded the best performance in terms of predicting liver cancer cases, with an accuracy of 0.980 (AUC: 0.886). In conclusion, this study showed an increasing trend in the annual prevalence of hepatitis, but a decreasing trend in young people from 2002 to 2010 in Taiwan. The CNN model may be applied to predict liver cancer in a hepatitis cohort with high accuracy.

Recurrence of paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) has been reported to be lower in patients treated with radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFCA) than in those who are not. Few population-based surveys have stated the cost-effectiveness related to this treatment. We, therefore, performed a nationwide retrospective study using National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) data from 2001–2012 in Taiwan. The incidence of PSVT-related admissions was computed from patients’ first admission for a primary PSVT diagnosis. There were 21,086 patients hospitalized due to first-time PSVT, of whom 13,075 underwent RFCA, with 374 recurrences (2.86%). In contrast, 1751 (21.86%) of the remaining 8011 patients who did not receive RFCA, most of whom had financial concerns, experienced PSVT recurrence. The relative PSVT recurrence risk in those who did not receive RFCA was 7.6 times (95% CI: 6.67–8.33) that of those who did undergo RFCA. In conclusion, the PSVT recurrence rate was much higher in patients who did not receive RFCA at their first admission. Furthermore, RFCA proved cost-effective, with the ratio of the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) and gross domestic product (GDP) being only 1.15. To prevent readmission and avoid incremental cost, the authority could provide a financial supplement for every patient so that the procedure is performed, reducing the PSVT-recurrence life-years (disease-specific DALY).