TY - JOUR PY - 2021// TI - Development of a machine learning algorithm for predicting in-hospital and one-year mortality after traumatic spinal cord injury: mortality prediction tool for spinal cord injury JO - Spine journal A1 - Fallah, Nader A1 - Noonan, Vanessa A1 - Waheed, Zeina A1 - Rivers, Carly A1 - Plashkes, Tova A1 - Bedi, Manekta A1 - Etminan, Mahyar A1 - Thorogood, Nancy A1 - Ailon, Tamir A1 - Chan, Elaine A1 - Dea, Nicolas A1 - Fisher, Charles A1 - Charest-Morin, Raphaele A1 - Paquette, Scott A1 - Park, So A1 - Street, John A1 - Kwon, Brian A1 - Dvorak, Marcel SP - ePub EP - ePub VL - ePub IS - ePub N2 - BACKGROUND CONTEXT: Current prognostic tools such as the Injury Severity Score (ISS) that predict mortality following trauma do not adequately consider the unique characteristics of traumatic spinal cord injury (tSCI).

PURPOSE: Our aim was to develop and validate a prognostic tool that can predict mortality following tSCI. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective review of a prospective cohort study. PATIENT SAMPLE: Data was collected from 1245 persons with acute tSCI who were enrolled in the Rick Hansen Spinal Cord Injury Registry between 2004-2016. OUTCOME MEASURES: In-hospital and one-year mortality following tSCI.

METHODS: Machine learning techniques were used on patient-level data (n=849) to develop the Spinal Cord Injury Risk Score (SCIRS) that can predict mortality based on age, neurological level and completeness of injury, AOSpine classification of spinal column injury morphology, and Abbreviated Injury Scale scores. Validation of the SCIRS was performed by testing its accuracy in an independent validation cohort (n=396) and comparing its performance to the ISS, a measure which is used to predict mortality following general trauma.

RESULTS: For one-year mortality prediction, the values for the Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUC) for the development cohort were 0.84 (standard deviation=0.029) for the SCIRS and 0.55 (0.041) for the ISS. For the validation cohort, AUC values were 0.86 (0.051) for the SCIRS and 0.71 (0.074) for the ISS. For in-hospital mortality, AUC values for the development cohort were 0.87 (0.028) and 0.60 (0.050) for the SCIRS and ISS, respectively. For the validation cohort, AUC values were 0.85 (0.054) for the SCIRS and 0.70 (0.079) for the ISS.

CONCLUSIONS: The SCIRS can predict in-hospital and one-year mortality following tSCI more accurately than the ISS. The SCIRS can be used in research to reduce bias in estimating parameters and can help adjust for coefficients during model development. Further validation using larger sample sizes and independent datasets is needed to further assess its reliability and to evaluate using it as an assessment tool to guide clinical decision-making and discussions with patients and families.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1529-9430 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.spinee.2021.08.003 ID - ref1 ER -