7. Medical Applications I

As is well known, the areas of Reliability Risk Analysis are interdisciplinary in nature. Hence these concepts can easily be applied to various disciplines including Engineering and Medicine. This chapter discusses dome applications to Medical area. Concepts of Reliability/Risk Analysis play lot of role in arriving at decisions in complicated medical cases. The principles of reliability have also been applied to the field of medical science. The occurrence of Subdural Hematoma disease was predicted, and the application was based on the premises that the factors influencing the occurrence of subdural hematoma remain unchanged in space and/or time domain. The disease reflects the accumulation of blood outside the brain between the dura and the next layer-the arachnoid, which eventually results in stroke with consequential increased pressure on brain. The additional pressure on the brain develops subdural hematoma’s symptoms that reflect in terms of the loss of consciousness and immediate collapse of patient into coma state depending on the rate of bleeding. Subdural hematoma can also be caused by a head injury or stroke. This is because stroke itself can be a hemorrhage or blood clotting in cerebral vessels of all sizes, therefore, the occurrence of subdural hematoma was predicted by reverse approach that works on consequence- the stroke. Since most of the systems including medical systems are probabilistic in nature, it is prudent to apply the principles of Reliability and Risk Analysis in medical field also. That is what this chapter does. It should be noted that while few applications of Reliability/Risk analysis are discussed , there are many more situations in which these concepts can be applied.