Congratulations. You have made it through
the didactic content of this course. This week is your chance to put
the knowledge and skills you have learned into practice and
apply them to a real NLP task. You will be taking a series of notes that mention the term diabetes, and searching them to identify which patients have diabetic complications. You will be looking
for three types of diabetic complications: neuropathy,
nephropathy, and retinopathy. Diabetic neuropathy is a form of nerve damage that can cause
numbness and tingling, pain and even weakness where
the nerves had been damaged. The exact symptoms will depend on
which nerves have been damaged. Diabetic nephropathy
is the chronic loss of kidney function that can lead to end-stage kidney disease
and even kidney failure. Finally, diabetic retinopathy is a complication where the blood
vessels of the retina are damaged, and this can ultimately
lead to blindness.