A machine learning-based risk stratification tool for in-hospital mortality of intensive care unit patients with heart failure

BACKGROUND: Predicting hospital mortality risk is essential for the care of heart failure patients, especially for those in intensive care units. METHODS: Using a novel machine learning algorithm, we constructed a risk stratification tool that correlated patients’ clinical features and in-hospital mortality. We used the extreme gradient boosting algorithm to generate a model predicting the mortality risk of heart failure patients in the intensive care unit in the derivation dataset of 5676 patients from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III database. The logistic regression model and a common risk score for mortality were used for comparison. The eICU Collaborative Research Database dataset was used for external validation. RESULTS: The performance of the machine learning model was superior to that of conventional risk predictive methods, with the area under curve 0.831 (95% CI 0.820–0.843) and acceptable calibration. In external validation, the model had an area under the curve of 0.809 (95% CI 0.805–0.814). Risk stratification through the model was specific when the hospital mortality was very low, low, moderate, high, and very high (2.0%, 10.2%, 11.5%, 21.2% and 56.2%, respectively). The decision curve analysis verified that the machine learning model is the best clinically valuable in predicting mortality risk. CONCLUSION: Using readily available clinical data in the intensive care unit, we built a machine learning-based mortality risk tool with prediction accuracy superior to that of linear regression model and common risk scores. The risk tool may support clinicians in assessing individual patients and making individualized treatment. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12967-022-03340-8.