Physician decision support system for idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss patients.

BACKGROUND Idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) is an emergency disease, and its pathogenesis is still largely unknown, making it difficult to diagnose and develop a therapeutic strategy. To predict the treatment outcomes and further customize the treatment strategy, we used a physician decision support system that incorporates complex information from electronic health records. We first developed the infrastructure of the physician decision support system, including an integrated data warehouse and an automatic data de-identification workflow. METHODS We next conducted a cohort study to evaluate the treatment outcomes of 757 ISSNHL patients using the modified Siegel's criteria. The complete recovery ( 25 dB) subjects according to pre-treatment hearing grades were 32.9% (Grade 2 or 26-45 dB HL), 25.4% (Grade 3 or 46-75 dB HL), 31.1% (Grade 4 or 76-90 dB) and 4.5% (Grade 5, or >90 dB HL) (p < 0.0001). Patients with pretreatment hearing Grade 2 who received treatment within ≤7 days of disease onset had the highest rate of complete recovery (32.9%, 23/70). CONCLUSION In summary, using the physician decision support system, we successfully identified two predictors, the pre-treatment hearing Grade 2 (26-45 dB) and treatment within ≤7 days of disease onset, associated with the highest odds of achieving complete recovery (<25 dB) of hearing in patients with ISSNHL.