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Disease Causal Chain

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Many diseases do not have a single distinct cause and have several contributing risk factors. For example, a patient's heart disease might be influenced by genetic background, diet, stress and smoking. These influences can be diagrammed as a web or chain and are referred to as the Disease Causal Chain (DiCC). The DiCC can vary from patient to patient, and diseases often occur as a continuum of symptoms.

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This implies that number of diseases by conventional approach is a small figure. While number of diseases by the DiCC approach would be a big number.

The DiCC is made up of “events” and “risk factors that drive the disease process from backend event to the front end event”. Each event has scope to branch out to give rise to front end events. Similarly, an event may happen as a result of more than one backend events happening simultaneously (multiple morbidities). Hence, the DiCC is distributed in more of a web pattern rather than a hierarchy or a tree diagram.

Category: Medical informatics