TOWARDS AN AI-DRIVEN REGISTRY FOR POSTOPERATIVE COMPLICATIONS: A PROOF-OF-CONCEPT STUDY EVALUATING THE OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF AI-MODELS

Continuous quality improvement is essential in surgery, with clinical registries and quality improvement programs (QIPs) playing a key role. Postoperative complications (PCs) require substantial resources to manage, yet traditional QIPs are expensive and often lays a significant labor burden on clinicians in data collection. Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly natural language processing (NLP), offers a potential solution by automating and streamlining these processes, but models can be optimized for optimal sensitivity or positive predictive value. This study aimed to develop a mock-up automated registry for PCs using NLP algorithms and evaluate the effects of optimization strategies for surgical quality control. We hypothesized using NLP to obtain longitudinal overviews of key quality metrics is feasible, but that optimization strategies impacted on the observed rate of PCs and thus how quality management and surveillance would be affected in a real-world setting. We analyzed 100,505 surgical cases from 12 Danish hospitals between 2016 and 2022. Previously validated NLP models were applied to detect seven types of PCs, using two different threshold settings: a set of thresholds optimized for positive predictive value (PPV or Precision), referred to as F-score of 0.5, and a set of thresholds optimized for sensitivity, referred to as F-score of 2. Trends in PC rates over time were assessed, and hospital-level variations were examined using logistic regression models adjusted for age, sex, and comorbidity. The NLP models detected 8,512 or 15,892 PCs, depending on threshold selection, corresponding to total PC rates of 9.14% and 17.1%, respectively. Most PCs showed stable or increasing trends over time, regardless of threshold setting. Hospital-level analyses similarly revealed stable or rising PC rates in most institutions. Regression analyses demonstrated that threshold selection significantly influenced findings, impacting hospital comparisons. This study demonstrates that NLP can be used for automated PC detection in surgical quality monitoring. However, threshold selection and additional performance metrics, such as precision-recall curves (PPV-Sensitivity curves), must be carefully considered to ensure reliable and meaningful results beyond traditional Receiver Operator Area Under the Curve (ROC AUC) evaluation.