Overview
- Researchers analyzed 37,000 preoperative ECGs from patients who underwent surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
- Two models were developed, with the best performance coming from a fusion approach that combined ECG data with basic medical-record details such as age, sex, and existing conditions.
- The models predicted which patients would have a heart attack, a stroke, or die within 30 days after surgery, exceeding the roughly 60% accuracy of current risk scores.
- The team introduced an explainability method to highlight ECG features associated with adverse postoperative cardiovascular events.
- Authors plan to test the model on additional datasets and in prospective studies, and reporting indicates the research received federal funding.