Exploring the association of cancer and depression in electronic health records: combining encoded diagnosis and mining free-text clinical notes

Background: A cancer diagnosis is a source of psychological and emotional stress, which are often maintained for sustained periods of time that may lead to depressive disorders. Depression is one of the most common psychological conditions in patients with cancer. According to the Global Cancer Obse...

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Authors: Leis Machín, Angela 1974-; Casadevall Aguilar, David; Albanell Mestres, Joan; Posso, Margarita; Macià Guilà, Francesc Assís; Castells, Xavier; Ramírez Anguita, Juan Manuel; Martínez Roldán, Jordi; Furlong, Laura I., 1971-; Sanz, Ferran; Ronzano, Francesco; Mayer, Miguel Ángel, 1960-
Format: Article
Status:Published version
Publication date:2022
Country:España
Institution:Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Repository:Repositorio Digital de la UPF
OAI Identifier:oai:repositori.upf.edu:10230/54018
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/54018
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/39003
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Cancer
Depression
Electronic health records
Natural language processing
Text mining
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author Leis Machín, Angela 1974-
author2 Casadevall Aguilar, David
Albanell Mestres, Joan
Posso, Margarita
Macià Guilà, Francesc Assís
Castells, Xavier
Ramírez Anguita, Juan Manuel
Martínez Roldán, Jordi
Furlong, Laura I., 1971-
Sanz, Ferran
Ronzano, Francesco
Mayer, Miguel Ángel, 1960-
author2_role author
author
author
author
author
author
author
author
author
author
author
author_browse Albanell Mestres, Joan
Casadevall Aguilar, David
Castells, Xavier
Furlong, Laura I., 1971-
Leis Machín, Angela 1974-
Macià Guilà, Francesc Assís
Martínez Roldán, Jordi
Mayer, Miguel Ángel, 1960-
Posso, Margarita
Ramírez Anguita, Juan Manuel
Ronzano, Francesco
Sanz, Ferran
author_facet Leis Machín, Angela 1974-
Casadevall Aguilar, David
Albanell Mestres, Joan
Posso, Margarita
Macià Guilà, Francesc Assís
Castells, Xavier
Ramírez Anguita, Juan Manuel
Martínez Roldán, Jordi
Furlong, Laura I., 1971-
Sanz, Ferran
Ronzano, Francesco
Mayer, Miguel Ángel, 1960-
author_role author
collection Repositorio Digital de la UPF
description Background: A cancer diagnosis is a source of psychological and emotional stress, which are often maintained for sustained periods of time that may lead to depressive disorders. Depression is one of the most common psychological conditions in patients with cancer. According to the Global Cancer Observatory, breast and colorectal cancers are the most prevalent cancers in both sexes and across all age groups in Spain. Objective: This study aimed to compare the prevalence of depression in patients before and after the diagnosis of breast or colorectal cancer, as well as to assess the usefulness of the analysis of free-text clinical notes in 2 languages (Spanish or Catalan) for detecting depression in combination with encoded diagnoses. Methods: We carried out an analysis of the electronic health records from a general hospital by considering the different sources of clinical information related to depression in patients with breast and colorectal cancer. This analysis included ICD-9-CM (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification) diagnosis codes and unstructured information extracted by mining free-text clinical notes via natural language processing tools based on Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms that mentions symptoms and drugs used for the treatment of depression. Results: We observed that the percentage of patients diagnosed with depressive disorders significantly increased after cancer diagnosis in the 2 types of cancer considered-breast and colorectal cancers. We managed to identify a higher number of patients with depression by mining free-text clinical notes than the group selected exclusively on ICD-9-CM codes, increasing the number of patients diagnosed with depression by 34.8% (441/1269). In addition, the number of patients with depression who received chemotherapy was higher than those who did not receive this treatment, with significant differences (P<.001). Conclusions: This study provides new clinical evidence of the depression-cancer comorbidity and supports the use of natural language processing for extracting and analyzing free-text clinical notes from electronic health records, contributing to the identification of additional clinical data that complements those provided by coded data to improve the management of these patients.
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institution Universitat Pompeu Fabra
instname_str Universitat Pompeu Fabra
network_acronym_str ES
network_name_str España
oai_identifier_str oai:repositori.upf.edu:10230/54018
publishDate 2022
publishDateSort 2022
publisher JMIR Publications
publisherStr JMIR Publications
reponame_str Repositorio Digital de la UPF
spelling Exploring the association of cancer and depression in electronic health records: combining encoded diagnosis and mining free-text clinical notes Leis Machín, Angela 1974- Casadevall Aguilar, David Albanell Mestres, Joan Posso, Margarita Macià Guilà, Francesc Assís Castells, Xavier Ramírez Anguita, Juan Manuel Martínez Roldán, Jordi Furlong, Laura I., 1971- Sanz, Ferran Ronzano, Francesco Mayer, Miguel Ángel, 1960- Cancer Depression Electronic health records Natural language processing Text mining Background: A cancer diagnosis is a source of psychological and emotional stress, which are often maintained for sustained periods of time that may lead to depressive disorders. Depression is one of the most common psychological conditions in patients with cancer. According to the Global Cancer Observatory, breast and colorectal cancers are the most prevalent cancers in both sexes and across all age groups in Spain. Objective: This study aimed to compare the prevalence of depression in patients before and after the diagnosis of breast or colorectal cancer, as well as to assess the usefulness of the analysis of free-text clinical notes in 2 languages (Spanish or Catalan) for detecting depression in combination with encoded diagnoses. Methods: We carried out an analysis of the electronic health records from a general hospital by considering the different sources of clinical information related to depression in patients with breast and colorectal cancer. This analysis included ICD-9-CM (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification) diagnosis codes and unstructured information extracted by mining free-text clinical notes via natural language processing tools based on Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms that mentions symptoms and drugs used for the treatment of depression. Results: We observed that the percentage of patients diagnosed with depressive disorders significantly increased after cancer diagnosis in the 2 types of cancer considered-breast and colorectal cancers. We managed to identify a higher number of patients with depression by mining free-text clinical notes than the group selected exclusively on ICD-9-CM codes, increasing the number of patients diagnosed with depression by 34.8% (441/1269). In addition, the number of patients with depression who received chemotherapy was higher than those who did not receive this treatment, with significant differences (P<.001). Conclusions: This study provides new clinical evidence of the depression-cancer comorbidity and supports the use of natural language processing for extracting and analyzing free-text clinical notes from electronic health records, contributing to the identification of additional clinical data that complements those provided by coded data to improve the management of these patients. This research was carried out under the framework of the project Creating medically-driven integrative bioinformatics applications focused on oncology, CNS disorders and their comorbidities (MedBioinformatics, H2020-EU; grant 634143); and partially funded by the Institute of Health Carlos III (project IMPaCT-Data; IMP/00019) and cofunded by the European Union, European Regional Development Fund (“A way to make Europe”); and the Clinical Knowledge Aggregation by Mining Medical Reports (CliKA-MinE; PI17/00230), which is funded by Institute of Health Carlos III and cofunded by the European Union. JMIR Publications http://hdl.handle.net/10230/54018 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/39003
spellingShingle Exploring the association of cancer and depression in electronic health records: combining encoded diagnosis and mining free-text clinical notes
Leis Machín, Angela 1974-
Cancer
Depression
Electronic health records
Natural language processing
Text mining
status_str publishedVersion
title Exploring the association of cancer and depression in electronic health records: combining encoded diagnosis and mining free-text clinical notes
title_full Exploring the association of cancer and depression in electronic health records: combining encoded diagnosis and mining free-text clinical notes
title_fullStr Exploring the association of cancer and depression in electronic health records: combining encoded diagnosis and mining free-text clinical notes
title_full_unstemmed Exploring the association of cancer and depression in electronic health records: combining encoded diagnosis and mining free-text clinical notes
title_short Exploring the association of cancer and depression in electronic health records: combining encoded diagnosis and mining free-text clinical notes
title_sort Exploring the association of cancer and depression in electronic health records: combining encoded diagnosis and mining free-text clinical notes
topic Cancer
Depression
Electronic health records
Natural language processing
Text mining
topic_facet Cancer
Depression
Electronic health records
Natural language processing
Text mining
url http://hdl.handle.net/10230/54018
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/39003