Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40562007›Full record

ArticleThe western journal of emergency medicine2025

Developing Machine-Learning Models to Predict Bacteremia in Febrile Adults Presenting to the Emergency Department: A Retrospective Cohort Study from a Large Center.

Chia-Ming Fu, Ike Ngo, Pak Sheung Lau, Yaroslav Ivanchuk, Fan-Ya Chou, Chih-Hung Wang, Chien-Yu Lin, Chu-Lin Tsai, Shey-Ying Chen, Tsung-Chien Lu and 1 more

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in The western journal of emergency medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

11 authors.

Chia-Ming FuNational Taiwan University Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, Taipei City, Taiwan.
Ike NgoNational Taiwan University Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, Taipei City, Taiwan.
Pak Sheung LauNational Taiwan University, Department of Electrical Engineering, Taipei City, Taiwan.
Yaroslav IvanchukNational Taiwan University Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, Taipei City, Taiwan.
Fan-Ya ChouNational Taiwan University, College of Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, Taipei City, Taiwan.
Chih-Hung WangNational Taiwan University Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, Taipei City, Taiwan.
Chien-Yu LinEn Chu Kong Hospital, Department of Nephrology, New Taipei City, Taiwan.
Chu-Lin TsaiNational Taiwan University Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, Taipei City, Taiwan.
Shey-Ying ChenNational Taiwan University Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, Taipei City, Taiwan.
Tsung-Chien LuNational Taiwan University Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, Taipei City, Taiwan.
Hung-Yu WeiNational Taiwan University, Department of Electrical Engineering, Taipei City, Taiwan.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

introductionBacteremia, a common disease but difficult to diagnose early, may result in significant morbidity and mortality without prompt treatment. We aimed to develop machine-learning (ML) algorithms to predict patients with bacteremia from febrile patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) using data that is readily available at the triage.

methodsWe included all adult patients (≥18 years of age) who presented to the emergency department (ED) of National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH), a tertiary teaching hospital in Taiwan, with the chief complaint of fever or measured body temperature more than 38°C, and who received at least one blood culture during the ED encounter. We extracted data from the Integrated Medical Database of NTUH from 2009-2018.The dataset included patient demographics, triage details, symptoms, and medical history. The positive blood culture result of at least one potential pathogen was defined as bacteremia and used as the binary classification label. We split the dataset into training/validation and testing sets (60-to-40 ratio) and trained five supervised ML models using K-fold cross-validation. The model performance was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) in the testing set.

resultsWe included 80,201 cases in this study. Of them, 48120 cases were assigned to the training/validation set and 32,081 to the testing set. Bacteremia was identified in 5,831 (12.1%) and 3,824 (11.9%) cases of the training/validation set and test set, respectively. All ML models performed well, with CatBoost achieving the highest AUC (.844, 95% confidence interval [CI] .837-.850), followed by extreme gradient boosting (.843, 95% CI .836-.849), gradient boosting (.842, 95% CI .836-.849), light gradient boosting machine (.841, 95% CI .834-.847), and random forest (.828, 95% CI .821-.834).

conclusionOur machine-learning model has shown excellent discriminatory performance to predict bacteremia based only on clinical features at ED triage. It has the potential to improve care quality and save more lives if successfully implemented in the ED.

Indexed as

BacteremiaEmergency Service, HospitalFeverMachine LearningAdultAgedAlgorithmsFemaleHumansMaleMiddle AgedRetrospective StudiesROC CurveTaiwanTriage

Identifiers

PMID40562007
PMCPMC12208070

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.