Surgery's Rosetta Stone: Natural language processing to predict discharge and readmission after general surgery

Joshua G Kovoor, Stephen Bacchi, Aashray K Gupta, Brandon Stretton, Silas D Nann, Nidhi Aujayeb, Amy Lu, Kayla Nathin, Lydia Lam, Melinda Jiang, Shane Lee, Minh-Son To, Christopher D Ovenden, Joseph N Hewitt, Rudy Goh, Samuel Gluck, Jessica L Reid, Sanjeev Khurana, Christopher Dobbins, Peter J HewettRobert T Padbury, James Malycha, Markus I Trochsler, Thomas J Hugh, Guy J Maddern

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)
6 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Background: This study aimed to examine the accuracy with which multiple natural language processing artificial intelligence models could predict discharge and readmissions after general surgery. 

Methods: Natural language processing models were derived and validated to predict discharge within the next 48 hours and 7 days and readmission within 30 days (based on daily ward round notes and discharge summaries, respectively) for general surgery inpatients at 2 South Australian hospitals. Natural language processing models included logistic regression, artificial neural networks, and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. 

Results: For discharge prediction analyses, 14,690 admissions were included. For readmission prediction analyses, 12,457 patients were included. For prediction of discharge within 48 hours, derivation and validation data set area under the receiver operator characteristic curves were, respectively: 0.86 and 0.86 for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, 0.82 and 0.81 for logistic regression, and 0.82 and 0.81 for artificial neural networks. For prediction of discharge within 7 days, derivation and validation data set area under the receiver operator characteristic curves were, respectively: 0.82 and 0.81 for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, 0.75 and 0.72 for logistic regression, and 0.68 and 0.67 for artificial neural networks. For readmission prediction within 30 days, derivation and validation data set area under the receiver operator characteristic curves were, respectively: 0.55 and 0.59 for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and 0.77 and 0.62 for logistic regression. 

Conclusion: Modern natural language processing models, particularly Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, can effectively and accurately identify general surgery patients who will be discharged in the next 48 hours. However, these approaches are less capable of identifying general surgery patients who will be discharged within the next 7 days or who will experience readmission within 30 days of discharge.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1309-1314
Number of pages6
JournalSurgery (United States)
Volume174
Issue number6
Early online date29 Sept 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2023
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Natural language processing
  • General surgery
  • Patient discharge

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