Antw: Re: Age, gender and more

Technical (archive)
1

In een bericht met de datum 27-1-2005 13:39:00 West-Europa (standaardtijd), schrijft sam.heard@bigpond.com:

So I was wondering if we should model a class specifically for date of
birth…which handles date of birth and age as a function, and which
takes arguments like date of conception, date of mothers LMP, Expected
Date of Delivery and stores the normal gestational birthdate as well.
The class then has a feature called post-conception age as well.

The advantage is that we could even deal with things like ‘post-natal’
as a function (actual birth to day 28) and other phases in future if
appropriate. It would mean that in family history you could enter ‘young
adulthood’ as an age which might be better than guessing 22.

I know that a lot of this material has already been classified and coded in the international classification for nursing practice of ICN (Geneva). This kind of referring to age and time is quite usual in nursing practice, (after birth, post operative, young), infant)

I am now at an airport lounge and have no access to all, but do not start double work on this please…

William

2

Williamtfgoossen@cs.com wrote:

In een bericht met de datum 27-1-2005 13:39:00 West-Europa (standaardtijd), schrijft sam.heard@bigpond.com:

I know that a lot of this material has already been classified and coded in the international classification for nursing practice of ICN (Geneva). This kind of referring to age and time is quite usual in nursing practice, (after birth, post operative, young), infant)

I am now at an airport lounge and have no access to all, but do not start double work on this please.....

William,
what vocabularies and reference ranges should we be using? It appears that we need not just sets of terms like "after birth", "post operative" etc, but age ranges for them; and then there will probably be a similar set for different disciplines. E.g. I imagine that in perinatology "infant" might be defined as one range, while for psychiatry it will be defined another way. So a single vocabulary won't do it.

- thomas beale

3

This is an attempt to address the vocab and ranges issue.

This is a difficult issue. There are numerous terms in use,
which may be modulated by local factors and language of
communication. There are no WHO definitions here. Variations in
terminologies are large.

The International Paed Assn accepts the following only:

o Neonate : > 0 days <= 28 days (4 wks)
o Infant : > 4 weeks <= 1 year
o Child : > 1 year <= Adult (18 yr)

This adult is a 'legal' definition (in most countries) rather
than a biological entity. There is no biological definition for
the term 'adult'.

IOW, only the terms 'neonatal' and 'infant' are defined, and is
accepted by ALL medical disciplines. The problem comes in the
huge age group of 'child' encompassing 17 years ! I have not
come across any clear definition by any international or
professional body to things like 'adolescence', 'puberty' or
other things brought out on the list (though they are in common
use everywhere).

In India, an age-group range for acceptance of terms are noted
below. This is after discussions with a dozen or so
paediatricians to direct questions like 'what do you infer or
mean by the term toddler?'. This can at best serve as a
starting point to work from. It may be prudent to get further
opinions of practitiones in other countries before formalising
these terms since these would have to be defined 'by the EHR'.

o Toddler > 1 yr <= 2.5 yr (not yet learnt verbal commn)
o Pre-school > 2.5 yr <= 5 yr (happiness !)
o year-old ... e.g. 6 year old ... 9 year old child
o Pre-teen > 9 yr <= 13 yr (occasionally used)
o Adolescent > 12 yr <= 16 yr (infrequently used)
o Teenager > 13 yr <= 19 yr (commonly used)

The term 'puberty' is normally avoided because of individual
and sex dependent variances, though sometime used by an odd
practitioner here and there (mainly in Obs & Gynae). The term
'adolescence' is not in common usage here, this normally refers
to the 12-16 year age group. The pre-teen term is seldom used
and the 'year-old' nomenclature is used right through 6-12 yrs.
(viz. 11 year old boy/ girl/ child).

As stated above, there would be regional variations in use of
these terms, and a consensus needs to be reached for ranges
after studying all terms used for this sub-18 age group in
different countries.

This may serve the purpose of getting on track though ...

Dr USM Bish
Bangalore

4

Hi

Thanks USM, it is clear there are a lot of labels, the point is that I do not want to determine what they are, rather allow them to be used with an appropriate quantity or quantity range stored in the class.

My proposal is that we have a 'named quantity' class that displays a term, a quantity or a quantity range (as quantity range already has the interface for quantity).

Cheers, Sam

5

Sam, I second this proposal of a 'named qty class' with the qty
range defined. Don't know if there is any alternate way of
approaching this type of issue sensibly. The question here is
the defn of terms and quantity ranges for each of the classes.

Secondly, could we have a dADL/ UML to know what is in your
mind ? (take the example of 'infant', range 29-364 days). Once,
the idea is clear, we can use this method for other situations
where named quantities may be necessary (e.g. mild anaemia or
borderline hypertension etc).

Dr USM Bish
Bangalore

PS: Thanks List Admin, [Reply] now points to the list :wink: