AI Tool Predicts Surgical Infections, but Is Highly Site Specific

An artificial intelligence tool developed by researchers in the Netherlands proved quite accurate at predicting postoperative surgical infections in a local hospital, but less so when extended to a large academic center, emphasizing the need to retrain AI data on external data as these tools gain ground in medicine.

Despite multipronged efforts to reduce the incidence of postoperative infections, they still occur in approximately 20% of all patients. On average, these infections are not diagnosed until postoperative day 5, said Siri van der Meijden, a junior data scientist and PhD candidate at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), in the Netherlands, who presented her team’s research at the Surgical Infection Society’s 2022 annual meeting.

To be more proactive in the care of postoperative patients, Ms. van der Meijden and her colleagues developed an AI tool to estimate the risk for infection based on preoperative and interoperative variables; the tool is meant to be applied directly after surgery. Patients deemed at high risk could be closely monitored, “and ideally patients with a low risk of infection could be discharged from the hospital earlier,” she said.