Every healthcare provider – be it a physician, hospital leader, author, researcher, patient – can now be able to predict who is more likely going to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after a distressing event. By far, this has probably been the most elusive goal, although many researchers have been able to produce fundamental information needed to develop good predictive PTSD models over years.
We can be able to take decisions whether people need psychological intervention if we are able to predict in a relatively shorter period who are more likely to get PTSD after a disturbing situation. This should amend clinical outcomes by preventing or reducing the error rates while prescribing patients therapy that they actually do not need. Also, this should improve the efficacy of resources.
Psychiatry is one of the most complex subjects because the brain and the nervous system are quite complicated. They are, in fact, indistinguishable on an integrative level. Unlike other fields, psychiatry has a very few well-organized statistic and diagnostic tools. For instance, oncology and intensive care can track great information, making medical decisions prompt and effective. However, nothing can yet replace clinical findings.
In order to improve the quality of care for people who are exposed to traumatic events, an international, multicenter group of physicians and researchers founded the International Consortium to Predict PTSD (ICPP). The results of ICPP have been published in the Journal of World Psychiatry.
Prior research has developed some useful scales to predict PTSD symptoms for clinical management, for diagnostic purpose, and to identify the treatment focus areas. However, it has been hard to use these tools to estimate PTSD in the future, as there is no simple cut-off score.
Medical tools must be probabilistic, such as growth chart where there is a curve, measuring the bottom and the possibility along the side. For a given patient, you crosscheck the score mentioned on the chart, which tells you whether he/she will have PTSD. You may have a different chart for different groups, or you may have a table of numbers to cover scales or variable than a curve.
Using the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-IV (CAPS) for PTSD with ICPP in a clinical setting helps to:
- triage patients to appropriate medical care
- offer immediate intervention or psychological preventive therapy for trauma
- provide lighter interventions
- monitor close tracking of worsening PTSD
- follow up for less affected people
- ensure long-term monitoring
Physicians can use this medical tool when it comes to making clinical decisions, which is tailored-made to the particular person and his/her circumstances. Having this type of PTSD-prediction model can also help to apply for services that are required in the areas where health insurance companies need prior authorization.
It is imperative to track findings to see if using this PTSD-prediction model leads to better and long-term results. It seems more likely that making better decisions about early medical intervention will result in better outcomes; however, it is important to keep following-up to confirm and refine the prediction model.
The refinements include the ability to predict the onset of PTSD, to estimate the complexity of PTSD, to conclude which intervention will work best given the circumstances, and to evaluate how much the data is accurate and reliable. The bottom line is PTSD-prediction model can significantly improve the prediction power as well as clinical decision-making, care, and outcomes.
