02: CART Analysis to Predict Serious Complications with Central Line in Pediatric Patients

Music City Center 

Introduction. Serious complications like central line-associated bloodstream infection and venous thromboembolism are associated with central venous access devices and can be life-threatening. In this study, we used Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis to model the rate of these complications.
Methods. Children from Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS) 2017-2021 database were included in the study. CART analysis was performed to examine important risk factors of serious complications with central line. Data were randomly split into developmental (50%) and validation samples (50%). Gini index was used as splitting criterion. Parent/terminal nodes were set to be 10/5.
Results. Of 67,830 children hospitalized who had at least one central line placed during study period, 4,688 (6.9%) experienced serious complications. The CART model with disease severity, receiving total parenteral nutrition, central line type and complex chronic condition had an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.77 with sensitivity of 66.8% and specificity of 77.4% for the developmental samples.

Classification and Regression Tree analysis

Predictive modeling

Sensitivity

Specificity

area under the receiver operating characteristic curve 

Section on Statistical Consulting