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Machine learning techniques for mortality prediction in emergency departments: a systematic review

Naemi A, Schmidt T, Mansourvar M, Naghavi-Behzad M, Ebrahimi A, Wiil UK

BMJ open, 2021

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: This systematic review aimed to assess the performance and clinical feasibility of machine learning (ML) algorithms in prediction of in-hospital mortality for medical patients using vital signs at emergency departments (EDs).

DESIGN: A systematic review was performed.

SETTING: The databases including Medline (PubMed), Scopus and Embase (Ovid) were searched between 2010 and 2021, to extract published articles in English, describing ML-based models utilising vital sign variables to predict in-hospital mortality for patients admitted at EDs. Critical appraisal and data extraction for systematic reviews of prediction modelling studies checklist was used for study planning and data extraction. The risk of bias for included papers was assessed using the prediction risk of bias assessment tool.

PARTICIPANTS: Admitted patients to the ED.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: In-hospital mortality.

RESULTS: Fifteen articles were included in the final review. We found that eight models including logistic regression, decision tree, K-nearest neighbours, support vector machine, gradient boosting, random forest, artificial neural networks and deep neural networks have been applied in this domain. Most studies failed to report essential main analysis steps such as data preprocessing and handling missing values. Fourteen included studies had a high risk of bias in the statistical analysis part, which could lead to poor performance in practice. Although the main aim of all studies was…

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