Natural language word embeddings as a glimpse into healthcare language and associated mortality surrounding end of life

Abstract

ObjectivesTo clarify real-world linguistic nuances around dying in hospital as well as inaccuracy in individual-level prognostication to support advance care planning and personalised discussions on limitation of life sustaining treatment (LST).DesignRetrospective cross-sectional study of real-world clinical data.SettingSecondary care, urban and suburban teaching hospitals.ParticipantsAll inpatients in 12-month period from 1 October 2018 to 30 September 2019.MethodsUsing unsupervised natural language processing, word embedding in latent space was used to generate phrase clusters with most similar semantic embeddings to ‘Ceiling of Treatment’ and their prognostication value.ResultsWord embeddings with most similarity to ‘Ceiling of Treatment’ clustered around phrases describing end-of-life care, ceiling of care and LST discussions. The phrases have differing prognostic profile with the highest 7-day mortality in the phrases most explicitly referring to end of life—‘Withdrawal of care’ (56.7%), ‘terminal care/end of life care’ (57.5%) and ‘un-survivable’ (57.6%).ConclusionVocabulary used at end-of-life discussions are diverse and has a range of associations to 7-day mortality. This highlights the importance of correct application of terminology during LST and end-of-life discussions.