RESUMO
Tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis poses a formidable challenge in global healthcare, particularly impacting older individuals and pregnant women. Diagnosing TB disease during pregnancy and in comorbid patients is more challenging due to overlapping symptoms with normal pregnancy conditions and existing treatments for other diseases, necessitating careful assessment to differentiate TB symptoms from those of other underlying conditions. To address this issue, this study designs a novel bipolar fuzzy decision-support system by integrating the concept of complex proportional assessment (COPRAS) and a technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) approaches using bipolar heptagonal fuzzy numbers. The approach is utilized to assess the high-risk of TB coinfection disease in pregnant women. The bipolar fuzzy set provides positive and negative membership degrees of an element, which divulge a balanced perspective by both the presence and absence of the disease. Additionally, a defuzzification algorithm is proposed for bipolar heptagonal fuzzy numbers, converting bipolar heptagonal fuzzy into a bipolar crisp score (CBHpFBCS). The bipolar fuzzy entropy measure is utilized to weight the criteria. The findings highlight that TB+HIV (G3) coinfection is more severe in pregnant women compared to other TB comorbidities. Finally, sensitivity and comparative analyses are executed across diverse criteria weight scenarios and with existing fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods to validate the robustness of the proposed method and its outcomes.
RESUMO
OBJECTIVES: Tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious illness caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The initial symptoms of TB are similar to other respiratory illnesses, posing diagnostic challenges. Therefore, the primary goal of this study is to design a novel decision-support system under a bipolar intuitionistic fuzzy environment to examine an effective TB diagnosing method. METHODS: To achieve the aim, a novel fuzzy decision support system is derived by integrating PROMETHEE and ARAS techniques. This technique evaluates TB diagnostic methods under the bipolar intuitionistic fuzzy context. Moreover, the defuzzification algorithm is proposed to convert the bipolar intuitionistic fuzzy score into crisp score. RESULTS: The proposed method found that the sputum test (T3) is the most accurate in diagnosing TB. Additionally, comparative and sensitivity analyses are derived to show the proposed method's efficiency. CONCLUSION: The proposed bipolar intuitionistic fuzzy sets, combined with the PROMETHEE-ARAS techniques, proved to be a valuable tool for assessing effective TB diagnosing methods.
