Complex networks approach to study comorbidities in patients with unruptured intracranial aneurysms

Abstract

The role of complex network analysis in patients with diagnosis of unruptured intracranial aneurysm is unexplored. The objective of this study is to assess the applicability of this methodology in aneurysm patients. We retrospectively analyze comprehensive unbiased local digital data of a large number of patients treated for any reason between January 2004 and July 2019. We apply an age-cohort approach to a total of 628,831 patients and construct the diagnostic history of each patient—and include the information how old the patient was when diagnosed for the first time with each diagnosis coded according to International Classification of Diseases. For each cohort of age within a 10 year interval and for each gender, we construct a statistically validated comorbidity network and focused on crucial comorbidity links that the aneurysm code has to other disease codes within the whole network. For all cohorts of different age and gender, the analysis shows that 267 diagnose codes have nearest neighbour statistically validated links to unruptured aneurysm ICD code. Among the 267 comorbidities, 204 (76%) were found in patients aged from 40 to 69-years old. Patterns of connectivity with aneurysms were found for smoking, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, dyslipidemia, and mood disorders. A few uncommon connections are also detected in cohorts of female patients. Our study explored the applicability of network analysis and statistical validation in aneurysm observational study.