Second Opinion for Non-Surgical Root Canal Treatment Prognosis Using Machine Learning Models

Although the association between risk factors and non-surgical root canal treatment (NSRCT) failure has been extensively studied, methods to predict the outcomes of NSRCT are in an early stage, and dentists currently make the treatment prognosis based mainly on their clinical experience. Since this involves different sources of error, we investigated the use of machine learning (ML) models as a second opinion to support the clinical decision on whether to perform NSRCT. We undertook a retrospective study of 119 confirmed and not previously treated Apical Periodontitis cases that received the same treatment by the same specialist. For each patient, we recorded the variables from a newly proposed data collection template and defined a binary outcome: Success if the lesion clears and failure otherwise. We conducted tests for detecting the association between the variables and the outcome and selected a set of variables as the initial inputs into four ML algorithms: Logistic Regression (LR), Random Forest (RF), Naive-Bayes (NB), and K Nearest Neighbors (KNN). According to our results, RF and KNN significantly improve (p-values < 0.05) the sensitivity and accuracy of the dentist’s treatment prognosis. Taking our results as a proof of concept, we conclude that future randomized clinical trials are worth designing to test the clinical utility of ML models as a second opinion for NSRCT prognosis.