From reactive to proactive: Machine learning models for continuous positive airway pressure adjustments using heart...

Current adjustments of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) may expose patients to risks of respiratory episodes or oxygen desaturation. Therefore, this study developed machine learning models using leading indicators, such as heart rate variability (HRV) and oximetry-related metrics, to proactively predict optimal adjustment timings.

CPAP titration data were first collected from a sleep center in northern Taiwan. Subsequently, Continuous HRV and oximetry-related metrics were retrieved (60-s window with 1-s stride) and then labeled based on the presence of pressure adjustments. The dataset, comprising seven HRV and two oximetry-related parameters, was independently divided into training/validation (80%) and test (20%) datasets based on patient information. Five cross-sectional and two time-series models were established. The model with the highest accuracy and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) in the training/validation dataset was applied to the test dataset to investigate feature importance through permutation analysis.

A dataset comprising 14,629 time-series cases from 374 patients undergoing CPAP therapy was obtained. The InceptionTime model outperformed others during the training/validation phase with accuracies of 78.27% and AUROC of 78.07%, and achieved 80.92% accuracy and 76.52% AUROC in the test phase. Feature importance analysis identified peripheral arterial oxygen saturation, its standard deviation over a 60-s window, and normalized power in the very-low-frequency band of HRV as the most impactful predictors.

The findings demonstrated the feasibility of incorporating HRV and oximetry-related metrics, as leading indicators, to proactively predict CPAP adjustment timings. Further research should consider integrating these metrics to improve CPAP therapy.