Abstract:
Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection leads to varying degrees of liver damage, and poor patient visiting behavior patterns predispose to disease progression. The consultation data of a total of 44 919 patients with chronic hepatitis B from some hospitals in Chongqing from 2007 to 2021 were studied and categorized into chronic hepatitis B patients with five previous medical histories: hypertension, hepatitis, tuberculosis, coronary artery disease and diabetes. According to the time series of patients’ visits, three important indicators of human behavioral dynamics, namely interval distribution, burstiness and memory, were used to analyze patients’ visiting behaviors. The results show that the intervals of visiting behaviors in the population of chronic hepatitis B patients with different past histories are power-law distributed, and have strong burstiness and weak memory. Burstiness of patient visiting behavior is associated with adverse progression dynamics related with HBV infection, i.e., the more severe the disease, the lower the burstiness. Understanding patient visiting behavior from the perspective of complex systems provides theoretical support for further exploring the association between patient visiting behavior patterns and adverse disease progression status.