Deep Learning-Based Risk Prediction Model for Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events in Long-Term Breast Cancer Survivors

Clinical practice guidelines recommend cardiovascular toxicity risk restratification including evaluation of new cardiovascular risk factors and cardiovascular diseases 5 years after cancer therapy in adult cancer survivors. We aimed to develop prediction models for the risk of 10-year cardiovascular complications in five-year breast cancer survivors. We used the Korean National Health Insurance Service databases between 2005 and 2021, including 5,131 five-year female breast cancer survivors diagnosed in 2006. The study population was randomly split in a 4:1 ratio into the derivation and validation cohort. The primary outcome was the occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) at any time before the final follow-up at 10 years. We developed a deep learning survival model (DeepSurv) and compared its performance with traditional Cox proportional hazards (CPH) model using the same dataset. Model performance was assessed by time-dependent concordance (Ctd) index. Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) was used to assess feature importance. In the validation cohort, the DeepSurv and CPH model yielded Ctd index values of 0.738 (95% CI, 0.712–0.779) and 0.733 (95% CI, 0.649–0.777), respectively. In SHAP analysis, age, history of stroke, dyslipidemia, anthracycline use, and aromatase inhibitor therapy ranked highly in both models. A deep learning survival model that incorporates both conventional and breast cancer treatment-related cardiovascular risk factors outperformed traditional regression model in predicting 10-year MACEs among individual five-year breast cancer survivors.