A multicenter prospective study on postoperative pulmonary complications prediction in geriatric patients with deep neural network model

AIM: Postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) can increase the risk of postoperative mortality, and the geriatric population has high incidence of PPCs. Early identification of high-risk geriatric patients is of great value for clinical decision making and prognosis improvement. Existing prediction models are based purely on structured data, and they lack predictive accuracy in geriatric patients. We aimed to develop and validate a deep neural network model based on combined natural language data and structured data for improving the prediction of PPCs in geriatric patients. METHODS: We consecutively enrolled patients aged ≥65 years who underwent surgery under general anesthesia at seven hospitals in China. Data from the West China Hospital of Sichuan University were used as the derivation dataset, and a deep neural network model was developed based on combined natural language data and structured data. Data from the six other hospitals were combined for external validation. RESULTS: The derivation dataset included 12,240 geriatric patients, and 1949(15.9%) patients developed PPCs. Our deep neural network model outperformed other machine learning models with an area under the precision-recall curve (AUPRC) of 0.657(95% confidence interval [CI], 0.655–0.658) and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.884(95% CI, 0.883–0.885). The external dataset included 7579 patients, and 776(10.2%) patients developed PPCs. In external validation, the AUPRC was 0.632(95%CI, 0.632–0.633) and the AUROC was 0.889(95%CI, 0.888–0.889). CONCLUSIONS: This study indicated that the deep neural network model based on combined natural language data and structured data could improve the prediction of PPCs in geriatric patients.