Best Clinical Practice: Current Controversies in Evaluation of Low-Risk Chest Pain—Part 1

Guo

et al. 2020

BMC Cardiovasc Disord

Background: Chest pain is one of the most common complaints among patients presenting to the emergency department (ED). Causes of chest pain can be benign or life threatening, making accurate risk stratification a critical issue in the ED. In addition to the use of established clinical scores, prior studies have attempted to create predictive models with heart rate variability (HRV). In this study, we proposed heart rate n-variability (HRnV), an alternative representation of beat-to-beat variation in electrocardiogram (ECG), and investigated its association with major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in ED patients with chest pain. Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of data collected from the ED of a tertiary hospital in Singapore between September 2010 and July 2015. Patients > 20 years old who presented to the ED with chief complaint of chest pain were conveniently recruited. Five to six-minute single-lead ECGs, demographics, medical history, troponin, and other required variables were collected. We developed the HRnV-Calc software to calculate HRnV parameters. The primary outcome was 30-day MACE, which included all-cause death, acute myocardial infarction, and revascularization. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to investigate the association between individual risk factors and the outcome. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed to compare the HRnV model (based on leave-one-out cross-validation) against other clinical scores in predicting 30-day MACE.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heart rate n-variability (HRnV) and its application to risk stratification of chest pain patients in the emergency department

Guo

et al. 2020

BMC Cardiovasc Disord

“…Chest pain is among the most common chief complaints presenting to the emergency department (ED) [1][2][3]. The assessment of chest pain patients poses a diagnostic challenge in balancing risk and cost.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Machine Learning Dimensionality Reduction Showed Marginal Performance Benefit Over Stepwise Regression for Risk Stratification of Chest Pain Patients in the Emergency Department

Chee

et al. 2020

Preprint

Background: Chest pain is among the most common presenting complaints in the emergency department (ED). Swift and accurate risk stratification of chest pain patients in the ED may improve patient outcomes and reduce unnecessary costs. Traditional logistic regression with stepwise variable selection has been used to build risk prediction models for ED chest pain patients. In this study, we aimed to investigate if machine learning dimensionality reduction methods can achieve superior performance than the stepwise approach in deriving risk stratification models. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on the data of patients >20 years old who presented to the ED of Singapore General Hospital with chest pain between September 2010 and July 2015. Variables used included demographics, medical history, laboratory findings, heart rate variability (HRV), and HRnV parameters calculated from five to six-minute electrocardiograms (ECGs). The primary outcome was 30-day major adverse cardiac events (MACE), which included death, acute myocardial infarction, and revascularization. Candidate variables identified using univariable analysis were then used to generate the stepwise logistic regression model and eight machine learning dimensionality reduction prediction models. A separate set of models was derived by excluding troponin. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and calibration analysis was used to compare model performance.Results: 795 patients were included in the analysis, of which 247 (31%) met the primary outcome of 30-day MACE. Patients with MACE were older and more likely to be male. All eight dimensionality reduction methods marginally but non-significantly outperformed stepwise variable selection; The multidimensional scaling algorithm performed the best with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.901. All HRnV-based models generated in this study outperformed several existing clinical scores in ROC analysis.Conclusions: HRnV-based models using stepwise logistic regression performed better than existing chest pain scores for predicting MACE, with only marginal improvements using machine learning dimensionality reduction. Moreover, traditional stepwise approach benefits from model transparency and interpretability; in comparison, machine learning dimensionality reduction models are black boxes, making them difficult to explain in clinical practice.

“…Chest pain is among the most common chief complaints presenting to the emergency department (ED) [1-3]. The assessment of chest pain patients poses a diagnostic challenge in balancing risk and cost.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Machine learning dimensionality reduction for heart rate n-variability (HRnV) based risk stratification of chest pain patients in the emergency department

Chee

et al. 2020

Preprint

Background: Chest pain is among the most common presenting complaints in the emergency department (ED). Swift and accurate risk stratification of chest pain patients in the ED may improve patient outcomes and reduce unnecessary costs. Traditional logistic regression with stepwise variable selection has been used to build risk prediction models for ED chest pain patients. In this study, we aimed to investigate if machine learning dimensionality reduction methods can achieve superior performance than the stepwise approach in deriving risk stratification models. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on the data of patients >20 years old who presented to the ED of Singapore General Hospital with chest pain between September 2010 and July 2015. Variables used included demographics, medical history, laboratory findings, heart rate variability (HRV), and HRnV parameters calculated from five to six-minute electrocardiograms (ECGs). The primary outcome was 30-day major adverse cardiac events (MACE), which included death, acute myocardial infarction, and revascularization. Candidate variables identified using univariable analysis were then used to generate the stepwise logistic regression model and eight machine learning dimensionality reduction prediction models. A separate set of models was derived by excluding troponin. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and calibration analysis was used to compare model performance. Results: 795 patients were included in the analysis, of which 247 (31%) met the primary outcome of 30-day MACE. Patients with MACE were older and more likely to be male. All eight dimensionality reduction methods marginally but non-significantly outperformed stepwise variable selection; The multidimensional scaling algorithm performed the best with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.901. All HRnV-based models generated in this study outperformed several existing clinical scores in ROC analysis. Conclusions: HRnV-based models using stepwise logistic regression performed better than existing chest pain scores for predicting MACE, with only marginal improvements using machine learning dimensionality reduction. Moreover, traditional stepwise approach benefits from model transparency and interpretability; in comparison, machine learning dimensionality reduction models are black boxes, making them difficult to explain in clinical practice.