Leveraging machine learning to develop a postoperative predictive model for postoperative urinary retention following lumbar spine surgery

Introduction Postoperative urinary retention (POUR) is the inability to urinate after a surgical procedure despite having a full bladder. It is a common complication following lumbar spine surgery which has been extensively linked to increased patient morbidity and hospital costs. This study hopes to development and validate a predictive model for POUR following lumbar spine surgery using patient demographics, surgical and anesthesia variables.Methods This is a retrospective observational cohort study of 903 patients who underwent lumbar spine surgery over the period of June 2017 to June 2019 in a tertiary academic medical center. Four hundred and nineteen variables were collected including patient demographics, ICD-10 codes, and intraoperative factors. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operation (LASSO) regression and logistic regression models were compared. A decision tree model was fitted to the optimal model to classify each patient's risk of developing POUR as high, intermediate, or low risk. Predictive performance of POUR was assessed by area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC-ROC).Results 903 patients were included with average age 60 +/- 15 years, body mass index of 30.5 +/- 6.4 kg/m2, 476 (53%) male, 785 (87%) white, 446 (49%) involving fusions, with average 2.1 +/- 2.0 levels. The incidence of POUR was 235 (26%) with 63 (7%) requiring indwelling catheter placement. A decision tree was constructed with an accuracy of 87.8%.Conclusion We present a highly accurate and easy to implement decision tree model which predicts POUR following lumbar spine surgery using preoperative and intraoperative variables.