Data-Driven Analysis of Systemic Indicators Linking Stroke-Associated Pneumonia, Delayed Cerebral Ischemia, and...

Background/Objectives: Delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI) is a major cause of poor outcome after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). Beyond large-vessel vasospasm, DCI reflects a systemic, multifactorial process involving inflammation, hematologic dysregulation, and organ dysfunction. Stroke-associated pneumonia (SAP), a frequent aSAH complication linked to stroke-induced immunodepression, may aggravate secondary ischemic injury. Unlike prior studies focusing on classical predictors alone, we included pneumonia and longitudinal respiratory parameters alongside inflammatory, hematologic, and renal markers. Using machine learning, this study aimed to identify predictors of DCI and functional outcome from routinely collected intensive care data. Methods: In this retrospective single-center study, 182 aSAH patients treated in a neurosurgical intensive care unit were included. Clinical data, SAP status, and longitudinal inflammatory, hematologic, renal, and respiratory parameters were extracted. DCI and functional outcome were assessed. Continuous variables were summarized as minimum, maximum, and mean values. Supervised machine learning models combining 12 feature selection methods and 12 classifiers were trained using five-fold cross-validation and evaluated by accuracy, F1-score, and AUC. Results: DCI occurred in 22% of patients, and SAP in 27%. The machine learning models achieved a mean accuracy of 59.7% (F1-score 58.8%, AUC 59.7%) for DCI prediction. No single dominant feature emerged; predictive patterns included leukocyte counts, CRP, erythrocyte indices, platelet variability, renal function, and oxygenation metrics. Functional outcome prediction performed moderately better (mean AUC 65.7%) and shared overlapping predictors. Conclusions: DCI reflects systemic instability in aSAH, with longitudinal inflammatory and respiratory variability outperforming static thresholds. Dynamic risk stratification may enable earlier detection of deterioration, supporting future time-series modeling and external validation.