Mortality prediction model for the triage of COVID-19, pneumonia, and mechanically ventilated ICU patients: A retrospective study

• Published in: Annals of medicine and surgery Vol. 59; pp. 207 - 216
• Main Authors: Ryan, Logan, Lam, Carson, Mataraso, Samson, Allen, Angier, Green-Saxena, Abigail, Pellegrini, Emily, Hoffman, Jana, Barton, Christopher, McCoy, Andrea, Das, Ritankar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2020; Elsevier
• Subjects: Artificial intelligence; COVID-19; Experimental Research; Machine learning; Mortality prediction; SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Artificial intelligence; Mortality prediction; Machine learning
• ISSN: 2049-0801; 2049-0801
• DOI: 10.1016/j.amsu.2020.09.044

Prediction of patients at risk for mortality can help triage patients and assist in resource allocation. Develop and evaluate a machine learning-based algorithm which accurately predicts mortality in COVID-19, pneumonia, and mechanically ventilated patients. Retrospective study of 53,001 total ICU patients, including 9166 patients with pneumonia and 25,895 mechanically ventilated patients, performed on the MIMIC dataset. An additional retrospective analysis was performed on a community hospital dataset containing 114 patients positive for SARS-COV-2 by PCR test. The outcome of interest was in-hospital patient mortality. When trained and tested on the MIMIC dataset, the XGBoost predictor obtained area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) values of 0.82, 0.81, 0.77, and 0.75 for mortality prediction on mechanically ventilated patients at 12-, 24-, 48-, and 72- hour windows, respectively, and AUROCs of 0.87, 0.78, 0.77, and 0.734 for mortality prediction on pneumonia patients at 12-, 24-, 48-, and 72- hour windows, respectively. The predictor outperformed the qSOFA, MEWS and CURB-65 risk scores at all prediction windows. When tested on the community hospital dataset, the predictor obtained AUROCs of 0.91, 0.90, 0.86, and 0.87 for mortality prediction on COVID-19 patients at 12-, 24-, 48-, and 72- hour windows, respectively, outperforming the qSOFA, MEWS and CURB-65 risk scores at all prediction windows. This machine learning-based algorithm is a useful predictive tool for anticipating patient mortality at clinically useful timepoints, and is capable of accurate mortality prediction for mechanically ventilated patients as well as those diagnosed with pneumonia and COVID-19. •Mortality predictions have not previously been evaluated for COVID-19 patients.•Machine learning may be a useful predictive tool for anticipating patient mortality.•Prediction can be estimated at clinically useful windows up to 72 h in advance.