Aggregation and reclassification--assessment of GALEN methods in the domain of thoracic surgery.

This paper reports on the experiences from evaluation of GALEN methods for mapping of follow-up categories in the domain of thoracic surgery to an existing classification of surgical procedures. The mapping of the aggregated levels or groups of thoracic procedures presents a genuine problem in relation to strict hierarchical classifications, since the follow-up categories not necessarily fit in the pre-set structure of the classification. The paper reports on the experiences from modelling of the traditional classification as well as modelling of the follow-up categories, together with an analysis of results with a discussion of opportunities and potential problems and pitfalls when applying GALEN models and tools.