Surgical fluid replacement is a critical issue in medicine as the fluid volume excess
or deficit can both complicate the patient’s condition. Currently, the administration
of fluid volume is carried out primarily based on the experience and expertise of
the anaesthetist as there is no analytical method available to estimate the patient’s
fluid level. The development of a decision support system (DSS) to assist the anaesthetist
in estimating the required fluid infusion rate for a particular patient has been the
focus of this research paper. The DSS is developed based on Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC)
technique which is ideal for developing input/output models in an unstructured and/or
complex environment. The fuzzy rules used in the DSS are derived automatically from
the clinical data produced in surgical operations. The DSS employs a Multi Rule Base
(MRB) learning scheme to adapt its model according to the significant variation in
the physiological parameters of a patient. The performance of the developed algorithms
is validated through experimental work using clinical data. The results obtained so
far are encouraging.
Keywords
Fuzzy Logic Control - Decision Support System - Multi Rule Base
