Association Rules of Comorbidities in Patients Hospitalized for Lung Cancer

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to find out how the accompanying diseases of lung cancer patients are related. Through this, we aim to provide implications for the management of lung cancer patients and the national cancer policy. Methods: The subjects of this study were the Korean National Hospital Discharge in-depth Injury Survey, which was surveyed from 2006 to 2016, and among them, patients with lung cancer were selected. The major variable, comorbidities, were grouped based on the middle classification of the KCD-7 revision. The general characteristics were analyzed by frequency, and χ-test was performed to test the difference in the distribution for the presence of comorbidity. In order to analyze the association rules of comorbidities, the support, confidence, and improvement of the association rules were presented and visualized using the arules package and apriori algorithm of the R program. Results: As a result of the analysis, the proportion of patients with comorbid diseases out of 21,882 discharged patients was 82.86%, and an average of 2.48 ± 2.19 comorbidities was diagnosed. As a result of applying the association rules criteria of support ( > 0.01), confidence ( > 0.1), and lift ( > 1), 33 comorbidity patterns were found. The high association rules were “hypertensive diseases (I10-I15)” and “malignant neoplasms of ill-defined, secondary and unspecified sites (C76-C80)”, “diabetes mellitus (E10-E14)” and “hypertensive diseases (I10-I15)”, “malignant neoplasms of ill-defined, secondary and unspecified sites (C76-C80)” and “diabetes mellitus (E10-E14)”, “influenza and pneumonia (J09-J18)” and “hypertensive diseases (I10-I15)”, and so on. Conclusions: This study provides the rules related to comorbidities of lung cancer patients in Korean. It is used for the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer patients, and it provides implications for effectively improving cancer policy. Future research on the effect on medical use or treatment results is needed, focusing on major comorbidities.