Machine Learning Model-Based Prediction of In-Hospital Acute Kidney Injury Risk in Acute Aortic Dissection Patients

Background: This study aimed to identify the risk factors for in-hospital acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients with acute aortic dissection (AAD) and to establish a machine learning model for predicting in-hospital AKI.Methods: We extracted data on patients with AAD from the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC)-IV database and developed seven machine learning models: support vector machine (SVM), gradient boosting machine (GBM), neural network (NNET), eXtreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), K-nearest neighbors (KNN), light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM), and categorical boosting (CatBoost). Model performance was assessed using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), and the optimal model was interpreted using Shapley Additive explanations (SHAP) visualization analysis.Results: A total of 325 patients with AAD were identified from the MIMIC-IV database, of which 84 patients (25.85%) developed in-hospital AKI. This study collected 42 features, with nine selected for model building. A total of 70% of the patients were randomly allocated to the training set, while the remaining 30% were allocated to the test set. Machine learning models were built on the training set and validated using the test set. In addition, we collected AAD patient data from the MIMIC-III database for external validation. Among the seven machine learning models, the CatBoost model performed the best, with an AUC of 0.876 in the training set and 0.723 in the test set. CatBoost also performed strongly during the validation, achieving an AUC of 0.712. SHAP visualization analysis identified the most important risk factors for in-hospital AKI in AAD patients as maximum blood urea nitrogen (BUN), body mass index (BMI), urine output, maximum glucose (GLU), minimum BUN, minimum creatinine, maximum creatinine, weight and acute physiology score III (APSIII).Conclusions: The CatBoost model, constructed using risk factors including maximum and minimum BUN levels, BMI, urine output, and maximum GLU, effectively predicts the risk of in-hospital AKI in AAD patients and shows compelling results in further validations.