Validity of Machine Learning in Detecting Complicated Appendicitis in a Resource-Limited Setting: Findings from Vietnam

Background Complicated appendicitis, a potentially life-threatening condition, is common. However, the diagnosis of this condition is mainly based on physician's experiences and advanced diagnostic equipment. This study built and validated machine learning models to facilitate the detection of complicated appendicitis. Methods A retrospective cohort study was conducted based on medical charts of all patients undergoing a laparoscopic appendectomy at a city hospital during 2016-2020. The synthetic minority over-sampling technique (SMOTE) was used to adjust for the imbalance. Multiple classification approaches were used to train and validate models including support vector machine (SVM), decision tree (DT), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), logistic regression (LR), artificial neural network (ANN), and gradient boosting (GB). Results Among 1,950 patients included in the data analysis, there were 483 patients identified as having complicated appendicitis (24.8%). Based on data without SMOTE adjustment for imbalance, the accuracy levels and AUCs were high in all models using different parameters, ranging from 0.687 to 0.815. After adjusting for imbalance data using SMOTE, AUC and accuracy levels in the models using imbalance adjusted data were higher. Of these, the GB had all AUC and accuracy values of approximately 0.8 or more in both adjusted and unadjusted data. Conclusions Machine learning approaches including SVM, DT, logistic, KNN, ANN, and GB have a high level of validity in classifying patients with complicated appendicitis and patients without complicated appendicitis. Among these, GB had the highest level of validity and should be used or further validated. Our study indicates the beneficial potentials of machine learning techniques in a clinical setting in general and in the diagnosis of complicated appendicitis in particular.