Improving Risk Stratification in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: A Novel Score Combining Echocardiography, Clinical, and Medication Data
It addresses the need for more accurate risk prediction in HCM patients to inform clinical decisions like ICD therapy, representing a domain-specific advancement.
This study tackled the problem of improving risk stratification for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) by developing a machine learning risk score that combines echocardiography, clinical, and medication data, achieving an internal AUC of 0.85 and superior external validation performance compared to the established ESC score.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) requires accurate risk stratification to inform decisions regarding ICD therapy and follow-up management. Current established models, such as the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) score, exhibit moderate discriminative performance. This study develops a robust, explainable machine learning (ML) risk score leveraging routinely collected echocardiographic, clinical, and medication data, typically contained within Electronic Health Records (EHRs), to predict a 5-year composite cardiovascular outcome in HCM patients. The model was trained and internally validated using a large cohort (N=1,201) from the SHARE registry (Florence Hospital) and externally validated on an independent cohort (N=382) from Rennes Hospital. The final Random Forest ensemble model achieved a high internal Area Under the Curve (AUC) of 0.85 +- 0.02, significantly outperforming the ESC score (0.56 +- 0.03). Critically, survival curve analysis on the external validation set showed superior risk separation for the ML score (Log-rank p = 8.62 x 10^(-4) compared to the ESC score (p = 0.0559). Furthermore, longitudinal analyses demonstrate that the proposed risk score remains stable over time in event-free patients. The model high interpretability and its capacity for longitudinal risk monitoring represent promising tools for the personalized clinical management of HCM.