Use of Machine Learning to Differentiate Children With Kawasaki Disease From Other Febrile Children in a Pediatric Emergency Department

IMPORTANCE Early awareness of Kawasaki disease (KD) helps physicians administer appropriate therapy to prevent acquired heart disease in children. However, diagnosing KD is challenging and relies largely on subjective diagnosis criteria. OBJECTIVE To develop a prediction model using machine learning with objective parameters to differentiate children with KD from other febrile children. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This diagnostic study included 74 641 febrile children younger than 5 years who were recruited from 4 hospitals, including 2 medical centers and 2 regional hospitals, between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2019. Statistical analysis was performed from October 2021 to February 2023. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Demographic data and laboratory values from electronic medical records, including complete blood cell count with differential, urinalysis, and biochemistry, were collected as possible parameters. The primary outcome was whether the febrile children fulfilled the diagnostic criteria of KD. The supervised eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) machine learnin gmethod was applied to establish a prediction model. The confusion matrix and likelihood ratio were used to evaluate the performance of the prediction model. RESULTS This study included a total of 1142 patients with KD (mean [SD] age, 1.1 [0.8] years; 687 male patients [60.2%]) and 73 499 febrile children (mean [SD] age, 1.6 [1.4] years; 41 465 male patients [56.4%]) comprising the control group. The KD group was predominantly male (odds ratio, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.55-2.06) with younger age (mean difference, -0.6 years [95% CI, -0.6 to -0.5 years]) compared with the control group. The prediction model's best performance in the testing set was able to achieve 92.5% sensitivity, 97.3% specificity, 34.5% positive predictive value, 99.9% negative predictive value, and a positive likelihood ratio of 34.0, which indicates outstanding performance. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the prediction model was 0.980 (95% CI, 0.974-0.987). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE This diagnostic study suggests that results of objective laboratory tests had the potential to be predictors of KD. Furthermore, these findings suggested that machine learning with XGBoost can help physicians differentiate children with KD from other febrile children in pediatric emergency departments with excellent sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy.

Automated summary

Early recognition of Kawasaki disease is crucial for appropriate treatment to prevent cardiac complications. This study developed a machine learning model using objective parameters to differentiate Kawasaki disease from other febrile illnesses. The model showed excellent performance in distinguishing Kawasaki disease with high sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy.