AI will provide heart transplant surgeons with new decision-making data, researchers say

Artificial intelligence can help doctors better assess the complex factors that influence patient outcomes, researchers announced today at the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions. This will have a major impact on the heart transplant process (Ishult) in Prague.

“Traditionally, we have evaluated the likelihood of transplant success based on individual risk factors,” says Eileen Schick, medical director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Heart Transplant Program. “I think our guidelines will change because we will be able to consider a weighted combination of risk factors and how they interact.

“That work cannot be done by hand,” she said. “Machine learning will provide us with data we have never had before and will bring about significant change.”

Johan Nilsson, MD, senior consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at Skene University Hospital and professor at Lund University in Lund, Sweden, is developing a decision support tool for transplant surgeons using a modeling technique called “digital twinning.” is being developed.

“This technology allows us to create digital images of each recipient, helping doctors predict future patient outcomes based on specific combinations of data,” he said.

Dr. Nilsson’s team has built a database containing multiple data points, including clinical information and test results, for all 600 heart recipients and donors treated at his institution since the beginning of the transplant program. They are also in the process of sequencing the entire genomes of the recipients and their respective donors to add to the database.

“Patients added to organ transplant waiting lists provide a lot of health data and test samples,” he said. “Similar information is collected from donors as well.”

Dr. Nilsson plans to add information such as heart rate, blood oxygen levels and biopsy results to the database and continue to track heart recipients after surgery.

“The benefit of the algorithm is that it provides an unbiased decision support system that helps physicians decide on the 3 R’s: get the right donor to the right patient at the right time.” he said. “If you get a donor in the middle of the night and he has three potential recipients, AI can provide an independent system to help determine the best donor.”

Dr. Nilsson said AI could help improve organ allocation systems by allowing doctors to more accurately predict outcomes at each stage of the transplant process.

Provided by the International Heart and Lung Transplant Society