SPINEX: An expert system to recommend the safe dosage of spinal anesthesia

This paper presents the design of an expert system to calculate the dosage of the local anesthetic solution, as well as, the baricity and vasoconstrictive additive needed for the safe administration of spinal anesthesia. This prototype system is intended as a reference device to assist professional anesthetists in their practice. Using VP-Expert, a commercially available expert system shell, this system was developed containing over 380 rules. The system was tested using actual 45 preoperative assessments and found to be efficient by the domain expert. It was correlated with actual solution seveny-five (75%) of the time; Twenty-three percent of the time the system's solution was different but not inaccurate. Only two percent of the time the system and the preoperative assessment were totally different.