Development of a pilot machine learning model to predict successful cure in critically ill patients with community-acquired pneumonia

Severe community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) remains a major cause of critical illness, yet there are no validated early clinical criteria to predict short-term treatment outcomes in these patients. Short-term pneumonia treatment outcomes are less affected by confounding factors introduced by a prolonged hospital course, and early prediction of short-term treatment outcomes can help physicians identify those who are likely to fail the current treatment and implement adjustments to existing diagnostic and therapeutic plans. Traditional clinical stability criteria such as Halm’s criteria are not calibrated for early outcome prediction in critically ill severe pneumonia patients. We applied the XGBoost algorithm to predict pneumonia cure by day 7-8 post- intubation with clinical features from days 1-3 in mechanically ventilated patients with severe CAP from the Successful Clinical Response in Pneumonia Therapy (SCRIPT) study, a prospective cohort study at a tertiary academic center. Pneumonia episodes were adjudicated for day 7-8 cure status by a panel of critical care physicians using a structured review process. Clinical features that inform Halm’s criteria, including vital signs, oxygenation parameters, mental status, and vasopressor use, were extracted from the electronic health record. We also examined model performance by including additional features, such as laboratory data, ventilator settings, and medications. Basic demographic characteristics including age and BMI were also incorporated. Among 85 patients, 42 (49.4%) were cured by day 7–8. The best-performing model, which used Halm’s clinical features and ventilator features from days 1–3, achieved a cross-validated AUROC of 0.757. Inclusion of lab and medication data did not significantly improve performance. Key predictors included GCS, norepinephrine requirement, and BMI. We prove the feasibility of using ML models to predict short-term treatment outcomes of severe CAP among critically ill patients with basic clinical features. Future studies should focus on external validation and clinical integration to inform prognosis and early reevaluation of treatment strategy in patients with predicted poor outcomes.