Parameter evaluation of the differential diagnosis of female urinary incontinence for the construction of an expert system.

Female urinary incontinence is a difficult problem for a patient but also for a physician. In the differential diagnosis of female urinary incontinence the physician has to determine a diagnostic class for the patient. This task is complex because of the unreliable patient history and the overlapping class boundaries. In order to develop an expert system to help the physician, a retrospective investigation on the incontinent women was performed to detect the potential expert system parameters. Also a diagnosis table was constructed from the expected values of parameters and the diagnostic classes. The results from K-means cluster analysis indicate that it is possible to develop the expert system on basis of the defined parameters and classes.