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Custom data sources / Height and weight references for Turkey and other countries #17

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birkanozer opened this issue Dec 14, 2022 · 7 comments
Open

Custom data sources / Height and weight references for Turkey and other countries #17

birkanozer opened this issue Dec 14, 2022 · 7 comments
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@pacharanero
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enhancement New feature or request

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@birkanozer
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Hi,
I'm planning to use this library for my thesis. The database used in this library is specific to the UK. I want to point the calculator to my country's data table. There is no easy way for that. Can you update the library for such customizations?
Thanks
@eatyourpeas
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Thank you for your interest @birkanozer. We currently only support UK-WHO, Turner and Down's syndrome but other references are on the road map. Which country are you talking about? Do you have reference tables and licences for them? Implementing a new reference at this point will be quite a big task. Are you interested in helping?

@birkanozer
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Hi,
I'm working in Turkey. We have our own national database of weight and height. I don't have the licences but as far as I know, it's public.

Actually what I have in mind is a little bit different. Since RCPCH backs this package, it's better if you keep it creditable. But the core codebase has excellent potential. I really liked the age calculation approach. My intention is to expand this codebase to allow external data tables so people can add their own measurements of the different patient groups as well as various measurement types such as liver size, WBC count etc. People even create their own plugins and share them with the scientific community.

In order to do that there must be more than a couple of additions to the library. I will work on that as soon as I finish my thesis. Hope it suits you.

Bests.

@pacharanero
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If you can link us to the source of the data for Turkey then we may be able to add it to the existing package. The codebase is already capable of accepting other types of reference data, but what you will often find is, because there is no international standard for the reference data, the references vary widely in type. Hence each reference in our case (UK-WHO, Turner, Downs) needed custom code to make it work properly.

It would be great to try to concentrate on this one package and one international centile-calculation effort rather than forking our package immediately and creating two different ones. We're willing to work with you to ensure your Turkish references can be added, and of course in the future we're likely to be asked to add CDC and WHO International data sources too, which we know needs to be on the roadmap.

@pacharanero pacharanero changed the title Custom data sources Custom data sources / Height and weight references for Turkey and other countries Dec 15, 2022
@pacharanero pacharanero self-assigned this Dec 15, 2022
@pacharanero pacharanero added the enhancement New feature or request label Dec 15, 2022
@birkanozer
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Hi,
I'm listing the references.

1 - Türk çocuklarında vücut ağırlığı, boy uzunluğu, baş çevresi ve vücut kitle indeksi referans değerleri (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255622491_Turk_cocuklarinda_vucut_agirligi_boy_uzunlugu_bas_cevresi_ve_vucut_kitle_indeksi_referans_degerleri) - This article only contains percentiles.
2 - Updated growth curves for Turkish children aged 15 days to 60 months (10.1111/j.1365-2214.2008.00813.x)
3 - Growth references for Turkish children aged 6 to 18 years (10.1080/08035250600652013)
4 - Body mass index references for Turkish children (10.1080/08035250500334738)

Except for the first article, all articles are under a paywall. Would it be a problem?

@pacharanero
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Except for the first article, all articles are under a paywall.

We would tend to avoid using a reference that wasn't openly/publicly available.

The first article lists some child measurement values for various centiles but the 'resolution' of these measurements seems to be very low - there are large gaps between the centiles so turning this into a calculator that takes in any arbitrary measurement is likely to be hard to do, or at least it is going to be very very inaccurate. I'm going to ping @statist7 here as he is our Obi-Wan Kenobi in regards the interpretation of these statistical data.

Are there any guidelines in Turkey about how to combine these different references? Perhaps from the Turkish paediatric academic community or the equivalent of what in the UK is our Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH)? A quick internet search for likely groups turned up http://turkpediatri.org.tr/ the Turkish Pediatric Association. What is their guidance for stitching together these various references?

The 6 to 18 year growth references can be seen here https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/08035250600652013 and they do have LMS values, so could be plugged in (if we can get access to the reference data openly) but note that the measurements were done at half-yearly intervals (as opposed to 2-weekly for UK-WHO) so the accuracy is going to be less. Nevertheless they would still be clinically useful I think.

This is really interesting and we have always been keen to extend the growth charts work to include other countries. That said, we aren't resourced to do this so it would have to be a 'best efforts' open source collaboration.

@birkanozer
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birkanozer commented Dec 16, 2022 •
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The first article lists some child measurement values for various centiles but the 'resolution' of these measurements seems to be very low - there are large gaps between the centiles so turning this into a calculator that takes in any arbitrary measurement is likely to be hard to do, or at least it is going to be very very inaccurate.

I'm aware of that. But anthropometric studies of Turkish children are very limited. There are only a few authors and a handful of studies in the area. To be honest I've never deeply thought about this area before. I'm trying to understand the mathematics behind it and how to interpret the data to create such programs. Yet, I think we should use localized percentile charts for a better representation of the population.

Are there any guidelines in Turkey about how to combine these different references?

Here, we have a different system than the UK. There are 2 big pediatric "collages" which are Türk Pediatri Kurumu and Milli Pediatri Derneği. Also, almost all sub speciality have their own society. Unfortunately, neither Ministry of Health nor these colleges and societies about paediatrics do have public/official opinions or guidelines about that matter. At least I don't know about it.

(if we can get access to the reference data openly)

I'll try to contact the authors and ask permission about it. Which kind of permission should I get?

I've made a deeper search and found additional papers about the topic. I'm listing all the previous and new research to keep track.

Open Access
1 - https://www.cshd.org.tr/uploads/pdf_CSH_279.pdf
2- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285630634_Reference_Values_for_Weight_Height_Head_Circumference_and_Body_Mass_Index_in_Turkish_Children
3 - https://www.turkarchpediatr.org/en/birth-weight-reference-percentiles-by-gestational-age-for-turkish-twin-neonates-162613

Restricted Access
1 - 10.4274/Jcrpe.1260
2 - 10.1111/j.1365-2214.2008.00813.x
3 - 10.1080/08035250600652013
4 - 10.4274/jcrpe.2183
5 - 10.1080/08035250500334738

@statist7
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statist7 commented Dec 17, 2022 via email

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@eatyourpeas @pacharanero @statist7 @birkanozer