A supervised machine learning model for identifying predictive factors for recommending head and neck cancer surgery

Abstract Background New patient referrals are often processed by practice coordinators with little‐to‐no medical background. Treatment delays due to incorrect referral processing, however, have detrimental consequences. Identifying variables that are associated with a higher likelihood of surgical oncological resection may improve patient referral processing and expedite the time to treatment. The study objective is to develop a supervised machine learning (ML) platform that identifies relevant variables associated with head and neck surgical resection. Methods A retrospective cohort study was conducted on 64 222 patient datapoints from the SEER database. Results The random forest ML model correctly classified patients who were offered head and neck surgery with an 81% accuracy rate. The sensitivity and specificity rates were 86% and 71%. The positive and negative predictive values were 85% and 73%. Conclusions ML modeling accurately predicts head and neck cancer surgery recommendations based on patient and cancer information from a large population‐based dataset. ML adjuncts for referral processing may decrease the time to treatment for patients with cancer.