title: Coping with the variability of medical terms.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To cope with medical terms, which present a high variability of expression through a single natural language, in the sense that any term may be reformulated in hundred of different ways.
  
  
  METHODS
  A typology of term variants is presented as a systematic approach in order to favour the implementation of an exhaustive solution. Then, an algorithm able to handle all variants is designed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Using MetaMap, single terms are analyzed with a success rate varying between 68 and 88 %; the algorithm presented in this paper improves this situation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This experience shows that a semantic driven method, based on a thesaurus, provides a satisfactory solution to the problem of variability of a single term. The presented typology is representative of most variants in a language.
authors.affiliation: Medical Informatics Division, University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. Robert.Baud@dim.hcuge.ch
authors.forename: Robert H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Baud
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ruch
authors.forename: Arnaud
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gaudinat
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Fabry
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lovis
authors.forename: Antoine
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Geissbuhler
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D012660:Semantics; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled