Machine Learning–Based Prediction of 1-Year Survival Using Subjective and Objective Parameters in Patients With Cancer

PURPOSE Palliative care is recommended for patients with cancer with a life expectancy of <12 months. Machine learning (ML) techniques can help in predicting survival outcomes among patients with cancer and may help distinguish who benefits the most from palliative care support. We aim to explore the importance of several objective and subjective self-reported variables. Subjective variables were collected through electronic psycho-oncologic and palliative care self-assessment screenings. We used these variables to predict 1-year mortality. MATERIALS AND METHODS Between April 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, a total of 265 patients with advanced cancer completed a patient-reported outcome tool. We documented objective and subjective variables collected from electronic health records, self-reported subjective variables, and all clinical variables combined. We used logistic regression (LR), 20-fold cross-validation, decision trees, and random forests to predict 1-year mortality. We analyzed the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve—AUC, the precision-recall curve—AUC (PR-AUC)—and the feature importance of the ML models. RESULTS The performance of clinical nonpatient variables in predictions (LR reaches 0.81 ROC-AUC and 0.72 F1 score) are much more predictive than that of subjective patient-reported variables (LR reaches 0.55 ROC-AUC and 0.52 F1 score). CONCLUSION The results show that objective variables used in this study are much more predictive than subjective patient-reported variables, which measure subjective burden. These findings indicate that subjective burden cannot be reliably used to predict survival. Further research is needed to clarify the role of self-reported patient burden and mortality prediction using ML.