Clinical evaluation of a machine learning-based dysphagia risk prediction tool.

Abstract

The rise of digitization promotes the development of screening and decision support tools. We sought to validate the results from a machine learning based dysphagia risk prediction tool with clinical evaluation. 149 inpatients in the ENT department were evaluated in real time by the risk prediction tool, as well as clinically over a 3-week period. Patients were classified by both as patients at risk/no risk. The AUROC, reflecting the discrimination capability of the algorithm, was 0.97. The accuracy achieved 92.6% given an excellent specificity as well as sensitivity of 98% and 82.4% resp. Higher age, as well as male sex and the diagnosis of oropharyngeal malignancies were found more often in patients at risk of dysphagia. The proposed dysphagia risk prediction tool proved to have an outstanding performance in discriminating risk from no risk patients in a prospective clinical setting. It is likely to be particularly useful in settings where there is a lower incidence of patients with dysphagia and less awareness among staff.