Thus, it is very difficult to accurately assess the risk of surgery for each patient, given that there are often different alternative surgical approaches.
However, an accurate assessment of the risks of each operation is necessary for the doctor to correctly choose the best surgical method for his particular patient. To date, the assessment of potential risk is based mainly on the knowledge and experience of the treating physician, which may be large, but certainly, a small subset of the overall accumulated global experience in pediatric heart surgery.
On the other hand, parents have the right to know the evaluation of the surgical results of the centers, where they go for the treatment of their children. However, the almost infinite combinations of pediatric cardiovascular diseases and risk factors, ie the uniqueness of each child, make the objective evaluation of the pediatric cardiac outcomes of a center very difficult: it is not easy to distinguish between adverse outcomes that are justified by the coexistence of many patients, and in those that, even taking into account risk factors, are not justified. Thus, often, insufficient surgical results can be easily attributed to various vague risk factors, e.g. dealing with “difficult cases”. Such an easy and scientifically unsubstantiated excuse simply prevents the detection of problematic services and the undertaking of corrective actions.
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning provide the solution to these great challenges of individualized prognosis and objective evaluation of pediatric cardiac surgery results. In collaboration with Professor Dimitris Bertsimas at MIT USA, we have developed innovative methods of Artificial Intelligence and analyzed the huge volume of data of the European Society of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery for more than 300,000 pediatric cardiac surgeries. The mathematical algorithms we developed examine the data in a completely cold and objective way, without human intervention or prejudice, discovering in a short time correlations between the various risk factors and coming to accurate predictions, in a way and speed that the human brain can not perform.
With this methodology, we have achieved:
• First, the most accurate personalized prognosis for each patient, paving the way for the personalized medicine of the future.
• Second, and equally important, the absolutely objective evaluation of the various pediatric cardiac surgery centers. The technology allows us to create an “x-ray” of each pediatric cardiac surgery center, revealing, where there are, elements of excellence, but also identifying often indistinguishable weaknesses in humans. Identifying potential weaknesses in a pediatric cardiac surgery program is, of course, a prerequisite for taking targeted actions to improve outcomes, as part of an ongoing quality assurance and quality improvement program.
These results of the pioneering research effort have already been published in the most prestigious scientific journal of pediatric heart surgery, the “World Journal for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery”. In fact, our relevant publication is already the most read pediatric heart surgery study of the last 6 months.
in conclusion
Artificial Intelligence in Pediatric Cardiac Surgery does not replace the physician, but offers him powerful tools that automatically draw on information from the accumulated global pediatric cardiac surgery experience to help him choose the optimal treatment strategy, individually tailored to each patient, to achieve the best results.
At the same time, Artificial Intelligence allows the automatic and objective monitoring and evaluation of the results of pediatric cardiac surgery centers, so that, on the one hand, parents and patients have the objective and transparent information they are entitled to for the expected surgical results, and, on the other hand, the information in each center so that any weaknesses can be identified and corrected in a timely and targeted manner, for the benefit of the patients.
Writes:
George Sarris
Pediatric Cardiac Surgeon
Director of the 2nd Pediatric Cardiac Surgery Clinic MITERA
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