Delirium prediction in the intensive care unit: a temporal approach

The incidence of delirium in intensive care units is high and associated with poor outcomes; therefore, its prediction is desirable to establish preventive treatments. This retrospective study proposes a novel approach for delirium prediction. We analyzed static and temporal data from 10,475 patients admitted to one of 15 intensive care units (ICUs) in Alberta, Canada between January 1, 2014 and June 30, 2016. We tested 168 different combinations of study design parameters and five different predictive models (logistic regression, support vector machines, random forests, adaptive boosting and neural networks). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) ranged from 0.754 (CI 95% ± 0.018) to 0.852 (± 0.033), with sensitivity and specificity respectively ranging from 0.739 (CI 95% ± 0.047) to 0.840 (CI 95% ± 0.064), and 0.770 (CI 95% ± 0.030) to 0.865 (CI 95% ± 0.038). These results are similar to previous studies; however, our approach allows for continuous updates and short-term prediction horizons which might provide major advantages.