Development and validation of an interpretable machine learning for mortality prediction in patients with sepsis

Introduction Sepsis is a leading cause of death. However, there is a lack of useful model to predict outcome in sepsis. Herein, the aim of this study was to develop an explainable machine learning (ML) model for predicting 28-day mortality in patients with sepsis based on Sepsis 3.0 criteria.Methods We obtained the data from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC)-III database (version 1.4). The overall data was randomly assigned to the training and testing sets at a ratio of 3:1. Following the application of LASSO regression analysis to identify the modeling variables, we proceeded to develop models using Extreme Gradient Boost (XGBoost), Logistic Regression (LR), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Random Forest (RF) techniques with 5-fold cross-validation. The optimal model was selected based on its area under the curve (AUC). Finally, the Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) method was used to interpret the optimal model.Results A total of 5,834 septic adults were enrolled, the median age was 66 years (IQR, 54-78 years) and 2,342 (40.1%) were women. After feature selection, 14 variables were included for developing model in the training set. The XGBoost model (AUC: 0.806) showed superior performance with AUC, compared with RF (AUC: 0.794), LR (AUC: 0.782) and SVM model (AUC: 0.687). SHAP summary analysis for XGBoost model showed that urine output on day 1, age, blood urea nitrogen and body mass index were the top four contributors. SHAP dependence analysis demonstrated insightful nonlinear interactive associations between factors and outcome. SHAP force analysis provided three samples for model prediction.Conclusion In conclusion, our study successfully demonstrated the efficacy of ML models in predicting 28-day mortality in sepsis patients, while highlighting the potential of the SHAP method to enhance model transparency and aid in clinical decision-making.