Prediction of intraoperative red blood cell transfusion in valve replacement surgery: machine learning algorithm development based on non-anemic cohort

Background Our study aimed to develop machine learning algorithms capable of predicting red blood cell (RBC) transfusion during valve replacement surgery based on a preoperative dataset of the non-anemic cohort.Methods A total of 423 patients who underwent valvular replacement surgery from January 2015 to December 2020 were enrolled. A comprehensive database that incorporated demographic characteristics, clinical conditions, and results of preoperative biochemistry tests was used for establishing the models. A range of machine learning algorithms were employed, including decision tree, random forest, extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), categorical boosting (CatBoost), support vector classifier and logistic regression (LR). Subsequently, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), accuracy, recall, precision, and F1 score were used to determine the predictive capability of the algorithms. Furthermore, we utilized SHapley Additive exPlanation (SHAP) values to explain the optimal prediction model.Results The enrolled patients were randomly divided into training set and testing set according to the 8:2 ratio. There were 16 important features identified by Sequential Backward Selection for model establishment. The top 5 most influential features in the RF importance matrix plot were hematocrit, hemoglobin, ALT, fibrinogen, and ferritin. The optimal prediction model was CatBoost algorithm, exhibiting the highest AUC (0.752, 95% CI: 0.662-0.780), which also got relatively high F1 score (0.695). The CatBoost algorithm also showed superior performance over the LR model with the AUC (0.666, 95% CI: 0.534-0.697). The SHAP summary plot and the SHAP dependence plot were used to visually illustrate the positive or negative effects of the selected features attributed to the CatBoost model.Conclusions This study established a series of prediction models to enhance risk assessment of intraoperative RBC transfusion during valve replacement in no-anemic patients. The identified important predictors may provide effective preoperative interventions.