Use of machine learning for real-time antibiotic treatment adjustment in high-risk patients with CRGNB infection

Infections caused by carbapenem resistant gram-negative bacilli (CRGNB) are associated with high mortality and pose a great challenge for clinical treatment. We aim to identify patients at high risk for CRGNB as early as possible and alert clinicians to make timely antibiotic treatment adjustments.

In our study, we included a range of variables for analysis, such as demographic characteristics, past medical history, antibiotic use, and laboratory data. Two machine-learning (ML) models were employed. The baseline prediction model accurately identifies patients with a high likelihood of drug resistance, whereas the real-time ML model facilitates clinical decision-making by alerting practitioners to tailor antibiotic treatment regimens for these high-risk patients.

A total of 2139 patients with positive microbiological cultures were included in the study. We found that carbapenem and combination/sequential antibiotic therapy increased the likelihood of CRGNB infection (P < 0.001), and for patients treated with similar antibiotics, the risk increased with exposure time. Six basic models-SVM, DT, RF, GBDT, ANN, and bagging ANN-based were used to developed predictive models and achieved AUC values of 0.87, 0.83, 0.88, 0.89, 0.90 and 0.91. The bagging ANN model has the best clinical prediction performance. Invasive procedures, RBC, ALB, fungal infection and respiratory tract infection were the top 5 most important predictors.

The integration of our innovative machine learning models into real-time decision-support tools provides clinicians with valuable insights, facilitating the timely modification of antibiotic treatment regimens for patients at high risk of CRGNB infection.