Machine learning algorithms to predict major bleeding after isolated coronary artery bypass grafting

OBJECTIVES: Postoperative major bleeding is a common problem in patients undergoing cardiac surgery and is associated with poor outcomes. We evaluated the performance of machine learning (ML) methods to predict postoperative major bleeding. METHODS: A total of 1,045 patients who underwent isolated coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) were enrolled. Their datasets were assigned randomly to training (70%) or a testing set (30%). The primary outcome was major bleeding defined as the universal definition of perioperative bleeding (UDPB) classes 3–4. We constructed a reference logistic regression (LR) model using known predictors. We also developed several modern ML algorithms. In the test set, we compared the area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCs) of these ML algorithms with the reference LR model results, and the TRUST and WILL-BLEED risk score. Calibration analysis was undertaken using the calibration belt method. RESULTS: The prevalence of postoperative major bleeding was 7.1% (74/1,045). For major bleeds, the conditional inference random forest (CIRF) model showed the highest AUC [0.831 (0.732–0.930)], and the stochastic gradient boosting (SGBT) and random forest models demonstrated the next best results [0.820 (0.742–0.899) and 0.810 (0.719–0.902)]. The AUCs of all ML models were higher than [0.629 (0.517–0.641) and 0.557 (0.449–0.665)], as achieved by TRUST and WILL-BLEED, respectively. CONCLUSION: ML methods successfully predicted major bleeding after cardiac surgery, with greater performance compared with previous scoring models. Modern ML models may enhance the identification of high-risk major bleeding subpopulations.